""White Slavery" and the Jews"
"[Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion] could hard imagine that Jewish women would stoop to crime or prostitution. When an associate, Meyer Weisgal, who resembled David Ben-Gurion, once told him humorously that a girl had walked up to him on a London street and offered her services, overwhelmed by the idea of sleeping with the 'Israeli prime minister.' Ben-Gurion, clearly troubled, was interested in only one thing: 'Was she Jewish?'"
Dan Kurzman, 1983, p. 39
'But where do Jews enter the picture?' I asked him.
'Ah!' said Simon [Wiesenthal], slapping his knee. 'I haven't told you something else. A few years ago, I have a talk with a man who went to school with Hitler. I ask him what Hitler was like in school and he says, 'Normal. But maybe this hatred began after got this infection from a Jewish whore.'
'Are you saying that Hitler caught syphillis from a Jewish prostitute?' I asked increduously.
Wiesenthal laughed and said: 'What's the matter? You think only Jews can catch diseases from prostitutes?'
'No, but were Jewish prostitutes common in Austria?'
'Why not? Is there a Gentile monopoly on prostitution?'
'I just don't see it as a vocation for a nice Jewish girl.'
'A nice Jewish girl,' Simon mimicked. 'You have those 'nice Jewish girls' in Israel, too, these days and they had them in Vienna years ago -- when there were more Jews.' -- Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, 1993 p. 18
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the twentieth century, Jews were deeply involved in what was popularly called "white slavery": international prostitution rings. "White slavery," notes scholar Albert Lindemann, "was a concern of Jewish leaders throughout the world, who recognized it as a special problem." [LINDEMANN, p. 33] [Jews have also dominated the pornography and commercial sexploitation business, a trend which continues to this day -- see Mass Media section.]
"Between 1880 and 1939," notes scholar Edward Bristow, "the Jews played a conspicuous role in 'white slavery,' as the commercial prostitution of that era was dramatically called. Not only was this Jewish participation conspicuous, it was historically unprecedented, geographically widespread, and fraught with collective political dangers." [BRISTOW, p. 1] "Jewish trafficking," says Bristow, "was anchored in brothel keeping, women freelanced or kept houses while their husbands procured ... Jewish traffickers also supplied Gentile-run houses." [BRISTOW, p. 56-57]
Rooted largely in Eastern and Central Europe where they "dominated the international traffic out of the area," [BRISTOW, p. 2] Jews were involved in prostitution rings that networked, wrote Arthur Mora (of London's Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women) in 1903, to "almost all parts of North and South Africa, to India, China, Japan, Philippine Island, North and South America, and also to many of the countries of Europe." [BRISTOW, p. 1] Jewish criminals trafficked women under their control virtually anywhere, also including the major cities of Bulgaria, Bosnia, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Ceylon, Manchuria, South Africa, Rhodesia, and Mozambique. [BRISTOW, p. 181]
"By 1900," says Bristow, "Jewish commercial vice was largely incorporated in underworld elements and many of it participants were predators of the poor." Jewish pimps, procurers, and traffickers preyed mostly on non-Jewish women, but even large numbers of Jewish women were part of their stables. [BRISTOW, p. 89]
In 1872, for example, Jewish prostitutes in Warsaw numbered 17% of the known prostitution population, in Krakow 27%, and in Vilna 47%. [BRISTOW, p. 23] Within the Jewish community itself, it was not uncommon for recruiters to marry innocent Jewish young women and "deposit them in foreign brothels." [BRISTOW, p. 25] Many of the Jewish criminal underworld figures apparently saw no gap between their day-to-day activities and their religious lives, often maintaining their religious obligations. A Warsaw thug, Shilem Letzski, organized a small synagogue for Jewish "prostitutes, madams, pimps, and thieves." This criminal community even had a rabbinical court "to settle disputes between pimps." [BRISTOW, p. 60] In Constantinople, prostitutes contributed money to "have their pimps called to Torah on holidays." [SCHNEIDER, p. 225] In New York City, "a public school and a large synagogue were situated right next door to the house of prositution." [RUBINOW, I., 1959, p. 114-115]
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, notes Donna Guy, the Jewish pimp organization called the Varsovia Society
"ostensibly functioned as a mutual aid society ... In fact, the Varsovia consisted of pimps who wanted to maintain their business and still lead a religious life ... Varsovia associates established their own synagogue
on Guemes Street in the midst of the traditional bordello district."
[GUY, p. 22]
Dr. Louis Maretsky, the head of the B'nai B'rith in Germany, forlornly noted in 1912 that at least 271 of 402 prostitution traffickers on a Hamburg police list were Jewish; in reviewing similar lists for Eastern Europe and South Africa at least 374 of 644 were from the Jewish community. [BRISTOW, p. 56] (No mention here is made of even higher possible percentages: as explored later, it has long been a tradition for many Jews in their diaspora to formally change their identifiable Jewish names).
Concerning Galicia, Maretsky wrote that "the prominence of Jewish traffickers and brothel operators there is no doubt. From the files of the Austrian and German police there were 111 Jewish traffickers active in Galicia and the neighboring province of Bukovina for 1904-08 alone." [BRISTOW, p. 56]
By 1889 Jewish women ran 203 of 289 (70%) of the licensed brothels in the "Pale of
Settlement" (encompassing over 20 provinces in eastern Poland and western Russia -- an area where Jews were about 12% of the population). 1122 of 5127 (22%) licensed prostitutes in this area were Jewish. [BRISTOW, p. 63] The grievous political dangers for local Jewry in the context of enduring interethnic hostilities, when 78% of the rest of the women were Gentile, many indentured in Jewish houses, is obvious.
Further in the West, 16 of 19 licensed brothels in Warsaw were run by Jewish women, prostitutes in the low-class establishments were expected to service 40-50 customers a day, up to 60-70 on Holy Days. (In 1905 the respectable part of the Jewish Warsaw community rioted against the brothels; 40 whorehouses -- legal and illegal -- were reported destroyed, 8 persons killed, and 100 injured). [BRISTOW, p. 61]
In Minsk, Jews ran all four legitimate houses of ill repute. In the Russian province of Kherson (which includes the city of Odessa) 30 of 36 licensed brothels were Jewish-owned. The American Consul in Odessa wrote in 1908 that the "whole 'business' of prostitution is almost exclusively in the hands of the Jews." [BRISTOW, p. 56]
Martin Fido notes another genre of Jewish Eastern European profiteer in the prostitution world, in England:
"Latvian ponces accompanied [prostitutes] to help them cross borders and find accomodation and working premises. These men were despised by police and
by some of the criminal fraternity for 'living off immoral earnings.' But they were not pimps ... They were effectively travel agents, couriers and managers in
strange and unfriendly places. Their arrival in London ensured that a major strand of prostitution would be controlled by organized crime. One of these Latvians, Max Kassell, was still running a small stable of hookers in the 1930s, when he was murdered in Soho ... Jewish dominance of the East End [of London] and its crime was reflected in their Yiddish name, 'spielers' (places
for games). In the Brick Lane neighborhood, Isaac Bogard, a Jewish villain whose swarthy complexion and tightly curled black hair earned him the nickname 'Darky the Coon,' extended his interests. He began in the early years of the 20th century by supplying muscle for street traders who wanted to prevent newcomers from moving in, but he moved on to managing prostitutes and drinking clubs." [FIDO, M., 2000, p. 19-20]
Then in London there was Harry 'Little Hubby' Distleman, "a Jewish club manager, gambler and possibly part-sharer (with his brother) in a chain of brothels." [FIDO, M., 2000, p. 31] Jewish author Chaim Bermant noted in the Jewish Chronicle in 1993 that "In the same period (1903-1909), 151 aliens [in Great Britain], most of them Jewish, were convicted for keeping brothels, and 521 for soliciting ... Rabbi Avigdor Schonfeld ... protested that to draw attention to the existence of Jewish prostitutes harmed the good name of the Jewish people." [JEWISH CHRONICLE, 1-15-93]
Incredibly, even in Germany, where Jews have such a horrible history, such Jewish-related problems still bubble beneath the surface. In 1994 a US News and World Report reporter noted the observations of a Frankfort policeman patrolling Precinct 4:
"'It's all owned by Jews,' [Bernd] Gayk says of the train station's red light district. 'Practically everything in this area is owned by German Jews. There is a single cabaret here owned by a German, but the rest belongs to the Jews.'" [MARKS, J., p. 42, 44]
Shockingly, even shortly after the Holocaust when there were only a few thousand Jews left in Germany, they remained prominent in the prostitution business there. In 1961 Rabbi Richard L. Rubenstein interviewed Dean Heinrich Gruber of the Evangelical Church of East and West Berlin. Rubenstein notes that Gruber nearly himself perished in a Nazi concentration camp, and he "had a long and heroic record of opposition to the Nazis on Christian grounds as well as friendship and succor for Nazism's chief victims [Jews]." [RUBENSTEIN, p. 5] "The problem in Germany is that the Jews haven't learned anything from what happened to them," the Dean told a startled Rubenstein, "I always tell my Jewish friends that they shouldn't put a hindrance in the way our fight against anti-Semitism." [RUBENSTEIN, p. 7] Gruber then complained that "many of the brothels and risqué night clubs, for example, were in Jewish hands, especially those in close proximity to army camps." [RUBENSTEIN, p. 7] And Rubenstein's response to the clergyman? "Look," the rabbi said,
"I don't understand why you are so troubled about a pitifully small number of Jews in shady positions or interested in making money rather than following more edifying pursuits. It seems to me that every person pays a price for the kind of life he or she leads. Why should Germany be upset about a few such Jews unless they are overly involved in other peoples' lives? Must every Jew make himself so pale, so inconspicuous, even invisible, that he will give no offense to Germans? ... After what happened [the Holocaust], why should any Jew remain and worry about German approval?" [RUBENSTEIN, p. 7-8]
Marvin Wolf, a Jewish captain in the U.S. army serving in Germany, recalls that in 1971
"Rabbi David, the Jewish chaplain in Frankfort am Main -- and the husband of my mother's second cousin -- told me that he knew several Jewish millionaires at whose homes I would be welcome -- but, 'I'm not crazy about any of them, 'he said. 'What do you mean?' I asked. 'After the war, '45, '46, Germany was in ruins,' he explained. 'Terrible times. Nobody had money except the Occupation forces and a handful of Jews who had survived the camps and got a monthly pension -- government reparations. In Frankfort, a few of these Jews recruited starving, desperate German girls and opened brothels. Got their revenge, and got rich, too. They're in other businesses now, but do you really want to spend Pesach [Passover] with such people?" [WOLF, M. J., 1998]
Source:Jewish Tribal Review"
