#abbadabba

He was a gangster sometimes called Oscar Biederman but more often Abbadabba Berman (than whom among Jewish killers only Knadels Nitzberg had a better name).  Among the Jewish gangsters of the first decades of the twentieth century no one remained more of a stereotypic Jew than Abbadabba: no gat for Abbadabba because Abbadabba was an accountant, the mathematical whiz behind Dutch Schultz’s (Arthur Flegenheimer’s) Harlem numbers racket.

Third generation Jewish Americans who write about the gangsters of Brownsville and the Lower East Side make them out to be more elemental, more authentic figures than intellectual children of immigrants, men like Alfred Kazin and Lionel Trilling. They paint them as good Jewish boys gone slightly bad; good yiddisher bokhers who visited Mama on shabbos, who contributed to the shul on Kol Nidrei night, who fought the anti-Semites. They make them out to be a fedora-wearing Palmach of Pitkin Avenue. Maybe some of this is true, but men like those in Murder Inc. were first and foremost thugs, killers, and extortionists. And if they occasionally beat the stuffing out of a Jew-baiting goy, they more than occasionally beat the stuffing out of Jewish strikers. But Abbadabba truly squared the circle: he was the good Jewish son (an accountant), and the bad Jewish son (a gangster). He kept one foot in two Jewish worlds.

His job was to collect all the policy slips for the day and apply his gift to them: he could flip through the stacks of paper and immediately see which three figure number appeared most often. If this number came up it would bust Schultz’s bank, so Abbadabba would call the racetrack in Coney Island to make sure that number wasn’t the day’s handle. And it never was.

But he was the Dutchman’s boy, and when Dutch fell afoul of Albert Anastasia by planning to put a hit on U.S. Attorney Thomas Dewey who was breathing down the mob’s neck, the days of Schultz and his crew – Abbadabba among them -- were numbered. Killing other gangsters was one thing; killing the U.S. Attorney would bring the wrath of the state down on them all.

So the call went out to Murder Inc, and on October, 23, 1935 Lepke Buchalter’s men went to the Newark steakhouse that was Schultz’s base.  Abe Landau, Lulu Rosenkratz, and Abbadabba were gunned down along with Schultz. Abbadabba died the next day. He’s buried in New Carmel Cemetery in Queens. His profession on his death certificate is “salesman.” Not really his, but a Jewish trade nonetheless.