Talk:List of Jewish-American mobsters

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[edit] Purple Gang members

Under Jewish mobsters, you forgot Abe Bernstein, a leader of the "Purple Gang," a mostly Jewish gang from Detroit, which gained prominence during prohibition.

The following is from another part of Wikipedia:

The Purple Gang was a notorious mob of (mostly Jewish) bootleggers and hijackers in the 1920s. Under the leadership of Abe Bernstein, the gang operated out of Detroit, Michigan, in the United States, which was a major port for running cached alcohol products across during Prohibition, since it is on the border with Canada. The history of the organization was recounted vividly in Paul R. Kavieff's The Purple Gang : Organized Crime in Detroit 1910-1945.

Perhaps the most ruthless bootleggers of their time, they may have killed over 500 members of rival bootlegging gangs during Detroit's bootleg wars. Originally, the mob came from young impoverished Detroit immigrants, who engaged in theft and armed robbery along Detroit's notorious Hastings Street. The gang supposedly received their name during a conversation between two Detroit market owners, each of whom had been victimized by the gang in its early days. One of them made a comment, "They're rotten, purple like the color of bad meat."

"The Purples were really a very loose confederation of mostly, but not exclusively, Jewish gangsters. Well, the gang started as a group of juvenile delinquents on the lower east side of Detroit, a group of about 16 or 17 children from the same neighborhood. Mostly they were involved in the usual petty crime of juveniles. . .rolling drunks and stealing from hucksters", according to Paul Kavieff [2]. 149.4.46.65 5 September 2006, 19:33 (UTC)