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Polish Mafia
Polish-American organized crime has existed in the United States throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Although not as well known as Italian, Irish, Russian mafias, the Polish Mob has a presence in many urban Polish American communities. Prohibition-era During Prohibition, many Polish-American criminal gangs took advantage of the opportunity to make money through the illegal sale of alcohol. In Chicago, Joseph Saltis and Jake Guzik allied themselves with Al Capone's Chicago Outfit. However, fighting Capone was the North Side Gang, which, while mostly Irish-American, had a large Polish presence as well, with Hymie Weiss (Wojciechowski) having Polish heritage. Fred Goetz was involved in carrying out the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. In New Jersey, the organization led by Mickey Cusick, was the prominent boss of bootlegging in Southern Jersey. The infamous gangster Meyer Lansky, one of the leaders of the National Crime Syndicate and associate of Lucky Luciano, was actually a Po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polish American
Polish Americans ( pl, Polonia amerykańska) are Americans who either have total or partial Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 9.15 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 2.83% of the U.S. population. Polish Americans are the second-largest Central European ethnic group after German Americans, and the eighth largest ethnic group overall in the United States. The first Polish immigrants came to the Jamestown colony in 1608, twelve years before the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts. Two Polish volunteers, Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, led armies in the Revolutionary War and are remembered as American heroes. Overall, around 2.2 million Poles and Polish subjects immigrated into the United States, between 1820 and 1914, chiefly after national insurgencies and famine. They included former Polish citizens of Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or other minority descent. Exact immigration figures are unk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Racketeering
Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. Originally and often still specifically, racketeering may refer to an organized criminal act in which the perpetrators offer a service that will not be put into effect, offer a service to solve a nonexistent problem, or offer a service that solves a problem that would not exist without the racket. However, racketeers may offer an ostensibly effectual service to solve an existing problem. The traditional and historically most common example of such a racket is the "protection racket", in which racketeers offer to protect a business from robbery or vandalism; however, the racketeers will themselves coerce or threaten the business into accepting this service, often with the threat (implicit or otherwise) that failure to acquire the offered services will lead t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hymie Weiss
Earl J. "Hymie" Weiss (born Henryk Wojciechowski; January 25, 1898 – October 11, 1926), was a Polish-American mob boss who became a leader of the Prohibition-era North Side Gang and a bitter rival of Al Capone. He was known as "the only man Al Capone feared". Early years Henryk Wojciechowski was born in present-day Sieradz, Congress Poland, to Walenty S. Wojciechowski and Maria Bruszkiewicz. His parents emigrated to the United States in 1901 when Henryk was 3 years old and, upon their arrival in the new country, took the names of William and Mary Weiss. They settled in Buffalo, New York and later moved to an Irish district in the north of Chicago. He had five siblings, Bernard (Bruno), Frederick, Violet and Joseph, one of the two who died during infancy.Hymie Weiss My Al Capone Museum As a teenager, Weiss became a petty criminal. After ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irish-American
, image = Irish ancestry in the USA 2018; Where Irish eyes are Smiling.png , image_caption = Irish Americans, % of population by state , caption = Notable Irish Americans , population = 36,115,472 (10.9%) alone or in combination 10,899,442 (3.3%) Irish alone 33,618,500(10.1%) alone or in combination 9,919,263 (3.0%) Irish alone , popplace = Boston New York City Scranton Philadelphia New Orleans Pittsburgh Cleveland Chicago Baltimore Detroit Milwaukee Louisville New England Delaware Valley Coal Region Los Angeles Las Vegas Atlanta Sacramento San Diego Houston Dallas San Francisco Palm Springs, California Fairbanks and most urban areas , langs = English ( American English dialects); a scant speak Irish , rels = Protestant (51%) Catholic (36%) Other (3%) No religion (10%) (2006) , related = Anglo-Irish people Breton Americans Cornish Americans English Americans Irish Au ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Side Gang
The North Side Gang, also known as the North Side Mob, was an Irish-Polish-American criminal organization within Chicago during the Prohibition era from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s. It was the principal rival of the South Side Gang, also known as the Chicago Outfit, the crime syndicate of Italian-Americans Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. History of the North Side Gang Early history Like many other Chicago-based Prohibition gangs, the North Side Gang originated from the Market Street Gang, one of many street gangs in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. The Market Street Gang was made up of pickpockets, sneak thieves and labor sluggers working in the 42nd and 43rd Wards. The gang especially distinguished itself during the newspaper "Circulation Wars" of the early 1910s between the '' Chicago Examiner'' and the ''Chicago Tribune''. It was during the Circulation Wars that future North Side leader Dean O'Banion, then a member of the juvenile satellite ''Little Hellio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel Capone (; January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison at the age of 33. Capone was born in New York City in 1899 to Italian immigrants. He joined the Five Points Gang as a teenager and became a bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, he moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard and trusted factotum for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol—the forerunner of the Outfit—and was politically protected through the Unione Siciliana. A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental in Capone's rise and fall. Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost killed him, handing control to Capone. Capone expanded the bootlegging b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jake Guzik
Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik (March 20, 1886 – February 21, 1956) was the financial and legal advisor, and later political " greaser," for the Chicago Outfit. Early life Guzik was born near Kraków, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary on March 20, 1886, to parents who were German Jews from Katowitz, in Prussian Silesia. Guzik emigrated to the United States in the early 20th century and later became involved in prostitution, and allegedly sexual slavery, in the South Side of Chicago's Levee red light district with his brother Harry, eventually driving North Side Gang-linked rival Jack Zuta out of business. He later became a powerful political boss and " fixer", who operated out of St. Hubert's Old English Grill and Chop House. There, Guzik received "bagmen," who delivered scheduled payoffs to various police precincts and city officials. Chicago Outfit In the early 1920s, Guzik, supposedly overhearing a plan to murder Al Capone, informed him and later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Saltis
Joseph Francis Saltis, (8 September 1894 – 2 August 1947), known as "Polack Joe", was a Polish-American Prohibition gangster who, with Frank McErlane, operated an illegal bootlegging racket in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois until his territory was seized by Al Capone and he fled to Wisconsin. Early life Saltis was born in Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire to Rusyns Jakob Saltis (from Spiš) and Maria Polaczek (from Šarišská, Prešov) and immigrated to the United States in 1905, becoming a saloon owner in Joliet, Illinois. Chicago He moved to Chicago with the announcement of the Volstead Act in 1920. With the assistance of John "Dingbat" O'Berta, a candidate for the Illinois State Senate, Saltis began supplying illegal alcohol to Chicago's speakeasies in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. During this time, Saltis remained on good terms with Chicago crime boss and his South Side neighbor Al Capone, whose Chicago Outfit began dominating Chicago's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prohibition In The United States
In the United States from 1920 to 1933, a Constitution of the United States, nationwide constitutional law prohibition, prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The alcohol industry was curtailed by a succession of state legislatures, and finally ended nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933. Led by Pietism, pietistic Protestantism in the United States, Protestants, prohibitionists first attempted to end the trade in alcoholic drinks during the 19th century. They aimed to heal what they saw as an ill society beset by alcohol-related problems such as alcoholism, Domestic violence, family violence, and Saloon bar, saloon-based political corruption. Many communities introduced al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Mafia
The American Mafia, commonly referred to in North America as the Italian American Mafia, the Mafia, or the Mob, is a highly organized Italian American criminal society and organized crime group. The organization is often referred to by its members as Cosa Nostra (, "our thing" or "this thing of ours") and by the American government as La Cosa Nostra (LCN). The organization's name is derived from the original ''Mafia'' or ''Cosa nostra'', the Sicilian Mafia, with "American Mafia" originally referring simply to Mafia (or ''Cosa nostra'') groups from Sicily operating in the United States, as the organization initially emerged as an offshoot of the Sicilian Mafia (known also as ''Cosa nostra'' by its members) formed by Italian immigrants in the United States. However, the organization gradually evolved into a separate entity partially independent of the original Mafia in Sicily, and it eventually encompassed or absorbed other Italian immigrant and Italian-American gangsters and Italia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russian Mafia
Russian organized crime or Russian mafia (, ), otherwise known as Bratva (), is a collective of various organized crime elements originating in the former Soviet Union. The initialism OPG is Organized Criminal (''prestupnaya'' in Russian) Group, used to refer to any of the Russian mafia groups, sometimes modified with a specific name, e.g. Orekhovskaya OPG. Sometimes the initialism is translated and OCG is used. Organized crime in Russia began in the Russian Empire, but it was not until the Soviet era that '' vory v zakone'' ("thieves-in-law") emerged as leaders of prison groups in forced labor camps, and their honor code became more defined. With the end of World War II, the death of Joseph Stalin, and the fall of the Soviet Union, more gangs emerged in a flourishing black market, exploiting the unstable governments of the former Republics. Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, said that the Russian mafia posed the greatest threat to U.S. national security in the mid- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irish Mob
The Irish Mob (also known as the Irish mafia or Irish organized crime) is a collective of organized crime syndicates composed of ethnic Irish members which operate primarily in Ireland, the United States, Canada and Australia, and have been in existence since the early 19th century. Originating in Irish-American street gangsfamously first depicted in Herbert Asbury's 1927 book, ''The Gangs of New York''the Irish Mob has appeared in most major U.S. and Canadian cities, especially in the Northeast and the urban industrial Midwest, including Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Chicago. Organized crime also exists in Ireland, predominantly Dublin and Limerick, but only became of any significance in recent decades. The groups are not related to the American Irish Mob and most often consist of families focusing on the drug trade. United States New York Pre-prohibition Irish-American street gangs, such as the Dead Rabbits (led by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_at_Mount_Carmel_Cemetery%2C_Hillside%2C_IL_1.jpg "Click for more on -> Hymie Weiss")
