Chapter VII: Pimps and White Slavers
---
---
(page 118)Typical for the Jew is the exploitation and organization of crime. This is also true of prostitution and procuring. Here, too, the Jew -- or the Jewess -- is usually the "entrepreneur," employer and pimp, sometimes, though, even the performer.
An objective and expert criminologist, who deals only in facts and who weighs every word(1) has written the following daring sentence, whose reserved tone underlines its content all the more:
"The widely-held view that Jewesses are not to be found among prostitutes is absolutely refuted by the facts."
A Jewish prostitute is in no sense an exceptional phenomenon. As an example, let the story of such a Jewish prostitute be related here(2): Anna Mayner was born in the year 1892 in Magdeburg. Her father is a baker, efficient in his business and well-to-do, the mother a former milliner, a nervous, always excitable woman. She is diabetic, the large household gives her much to do, she coddles her six children. Anna is a healthy, robust girl, she only sometimes has trouble -- as do many Jewish children -- with her tonsils. She attends a Jewish school, doesn't learn especially well, a couple of times she is not promoted. The reason is more laziness than lack of intelligence, for by no means is Anna dumb, she has self-confidence and her lack of book knowledge doesn't bother her -- if things become difficult, she will find a way out. All in all, Anna has a happy childhood, she knows neither need nor bad family circumstances. Gradually, Anna is growing up, her circle of acquaintances and friends is large, she often goes off in the evening and stays out for a long time. Her mother quarrels with her, there are
unpleasant scenes and then a tearful reconciliation: [119] Anna
promises over and over again to attend to her behavior, otherwise the wealthy marriage which has been placed in prospect for the baker's daughter will be more difficult to achieve. She doesn't keep her promise for very long. She's barely seventeen years old when she makes the acquaintance in the synagogue of a wealthy Jew. Directly from the synagogue the pair goes to a restaurant serving wine. The gentleman is generous and does not stint on the wine; the next morning Anna awakens in the apartment of her new friend. She's not
uncomfortable with this situation, and a strong relationship ensues which lasts a year. Her friend wants to marry her, for she's a handsome, typically Jewish blonde, she comes "from a good house," her father is not without wealth. But Anna isn't thinking in the least of tying herself down already. With 500 Marks in her pocket, she leaves her parents' house one day and goes to Cologne, where she has an aunt. Then she goes to Brussels, to a new lover, a Jewish tenor. The singer is
masochistically inclined, he enjoys it when he is abused, and Anna also finds fun in it, for she is not free of sadistic tendencies.
After four months she has had enough of the tenor and returns to Cologne. There she gets to know a charwoman who does the laundry for a large bordello. Her descriptions of the supposedly carefree, labor- free life of a prostitute make an impression upon Anna, and she
becomes one of the ornaments of this bordello.
That's the right kind of life for the work-shy, fickle Anna, who is enamored of fineries! She doesn't need to work, she gets sweets, as many as she wants, and one evening after another she's allowed to drink wine. To be sure, it sometimes happens that she does too much of a good thing. Then she cuts loose, smashes things up and runs naked out on the streets. The proprietress of the bordello doesn't hold it against her, though -- she earns more than a little on Anna.
When Anna has had enough of the "residential life," she leaves the bordello and goes on the street for a while. She's picked up by the vice police, put under supervision, and several times contracts venereal disease. When she wants to "rest," she returns to the bordello, only to again become a street prostitute for a change. She spends five years of her life in this way. . .
Nevertheless, Anna does not in any way see herself as a "fallen" woman. She is still always the same lazy but by no means stupid Jewish girl as she was years before. In 1915, she makes acquaintance
with a Jewish "wholesale merchant," who doesn't do badly supplying the army. She is 23 years old, her life experience is great, her mind sharpened. She believes that she has "amused" herself enough and that it's time to think of the future.
[120] Just as she once transformed herself from the spoiled little daughter of the house into a street whore, she now completes the transition to the "respectable" life. She learns stenography and bookkeeping, she puts through her release from prostitution police control, and in 1916 she marries her racketeer and war profiteer. Now she is suddenly married, has a fine apartment for whose furnishings her very numerous acquaintances envy her. She dresses with elegance but not flashily, she is very proud of her beautifully cared for hands, her husband earns a lot of money. To complete the idyll, the two adopt the illegitimate child of one of Anna's sisters. Of the former prostitute no trace whatsoever seems to remain, Anna has, for now, transformed herself into a "lady."
Anna Meyner could be regarded as a genuine full-blooded Jewess. In
her case we see that typically Jewish slipping back-and-forth between two spheres which to us seem totally separate but which for the Jews form a uniform whole with no trouble at all -- the sphere of the middle- class life and the sphere of the criminal Underworld. Anna Meyner did
not go down to ruin. She did nothing in the eyes of her racial comrades
which would justify expulsion from their "society."
The Jewish prostitute differs psychologically from the others -- she regards her activities as an occupation like any other, an occupation which she can always change. The Jewish prostitute is -- by Jewish standards -- a completely wholesome person, while non-Jewish whores are degenerate, genetically tainted, or are otherwise racially inferior. The exception here is the rule there; the inferior is "wholesome" there and the criminal, "legal." Two worlds. . .
The throng attending the trial of Riehl-Pollack(1) and accomplices was huge.
Eleven persons sit at the defense table: a plumber's helper who left his daughter in the public house of Riehl, received a monthly pension from the proprietress for it and had energetically worked on his daughter in case she became refractory. Further, there were eight wretched
prostitutes who had been made to commit perjury by threats, requests and promises by Riehl. Those are the secondary figures in this trial.
The chief defendants are two women: Riehl and Pollack. Regine Riehl, a powerfully-built, stocky person, with traces of former beauty in her face, is assured in her manners, impudent and at the same time fluid in her gestures, quick-witted in her responses -- the typical bordello hostess.
[121] Next to her sits "Antoine Pollack, born 1 October 1838 in Pravonin, of the Mosaic religion, married, a waitress" -- a small, deformed old woman with a sunken back, black-colored hair, with burning unsteady eyes under the disorderly tangle of little curls, with dark shadows on her face, with nervous speech and a hard, guttural voice: she didn't know a thing [she said], she was a simple waitress, she was being slandered -- she cried all the time, protested her innocence, called on God to bear witness.
Of what are Riehl and Pollack accused? False imprisonment, abuse of the girls, embezzlement, suborning perjury.
The husband of Riehl was a chief clerk. Since he didn't earn enough, Riehl came up with the bright idea of establishing a bordello, in order by this means to "save and to prove that she was a good hostess." The bordello is located in the Grüne Torgasse and on the door it reads "Riehl Fashion Salon" -- it looks highly respectable. The establishment had cost 40,000 Kronen, the yearly rent amounted to 10,000 Kronen -- a great deal of money for the poor wife of a clerk. Who had advanced it to her? Riehl keeps up to 20 girls, and her confidante, assistant, agent and helper is Pollack. When it is a matter of keeping an eye on the girls, taking presents away from them which the guests had given them, the so-called "Strumpfgeld" ["stockings-money" -- i.e., money for
purchasing silk stockings, given to a prostitute as a personal gift above and beyond the fee for sexual acts, which the "guests" knew went mostly or entirely into the pockets of the madam...], delivering a girl who had become ill to the hospital, picking up a convalescent girl, recruiting new girls, listening in to their conversations, pursuing girls who had fled, locking in the inmates of the bordello, talking the parents of the girls into tolerating their trade, leading the authorities astray -- all this Pollack takes care of, to the complete satisfaction of Riehl. Pollack can handle everything, just not receive the police agent in charge, who bears the remarkable name Piß; Riehl takes care of that herself.
Pollack does not live in the bordello, since she has a "secondary occupation": somewhere in the Jewish Quarter she owns a residence
and rents the rooms to "bed-goers" -- mostly whores who walk the streets. Pollack has supplied many of them to Riehl, and she otherwise zealously advertises the bordello of whose income -- and it is
extraordinarily high, for Riehl earns up to 45,000 Kronen annually -- she is not without a share. She keeps a file of agents who are constantly searching for such suitable girls: unemployed fellows, criminals,
pimps, sometimes even unscrupulous parents. The usual fee is 4
Kronen for each girl supplied but sometimes considerably more, if the
object is especially beautiful and attractive. With agencies supplying domestic help, with the inmates of hospitals, in short, with [122] all places where reckless girls or girls who are in circumstances of need, can be found, the tireless Pollack maintains connections.
What is the life of the girls like in the Riehl-Pollack House?
The rooms below, where the guests are received, are fitted out with great comfort, but above is where the girls reside, and it has been characterized as "barracks." The last guest has scarcely gone off when the girls are herded upstairs where they must sleep two to a bed in awful proximity. The windows of the "barracks" are secured by means of bars, and the door is locked from the outside. The room is so small that only nine cubic meters of air is allotted for every girl (compared with twenty cubic meters in the district court prison). Sleep lasts until the middle of the day, then the girls must go to line up for lunch, only to be locked in the "barracks" again until evening. For clothing, one blouse, a slip, stockings, slippers and a large apron or nightgown are given them -- in such clothing they can neither flee nor show
themselves on the street. At Riehl-Pollack House, everything has been calculated and figured out ahead of time.
In the evening, they go to the "salon"; there the girls get their "professional clothes," which they must surrender before going to sleep. Pollack, unceasingly darting back and forth with soundless steps, collects the money from the visitors, and nothing escapes her eyes and ears.
The correspondence of the girls is watched over in the strictest fashion, they write most of their letters from Riehl's dictation or Pollack's. None of them are allowed to go outside the house, only sometimes Riehl permits some favored girl to go into the garden for a short time, so that most of them, without air or sunlight for months, become pale and sickly.
The inmates of the bordello aren't able to save any money.
Theoretically the girls are supposed to be paid one half of what is taken in from the guests. Theoretically -- for from the other half they have to pay daily four Kronen for "room and board," pay the doctor, pay for their clothes. In short, it always turns out that the girls never have a penny to their names and are not allowed to keep money with them at all.
Life in the bordello is so agonizing that each girl thinks of escaping. They can almost never realize it, for a Cerberus, to whom the strictest orders are given, sits at the door. The remaining single possibility is -- illness and transfer to a hospital. And that is why Riehl-Pollack fear nothing worse than they fear [123] illnesses. When the doctor comes on his prescribed visit, the sick girls are hidden in the henhouse, and if transfer to a hospital really cannot be avoided, Pollack must go into action again -- she delivers the girl there, she constantly informs herself concerning the course of the illness, she knows when the discharge is supposed to occur, she waits in front of the hospital prepared with a hackney carriage to bring the girl back into the bordello.
Riehl always insists upon "the strictest observance of the laws," i.e., she observes the police regulations in her way. So, for example, it is prohibited to keep girls in the house who have not yet lost their
virginity; if such a girl falls into her hands, Pollack sees to it that what is necessary is done. If the victim yells too loudly, Pollack stuffs a pillow in her mouth.
Riehl-Pollack believes in "strict discipline," in which face-slaps, whippings, pokers, canes, and broomsticks must be used. Requests for release [from the bordello], laments or complaints, have as their result only insults, threats of the police or the workhouse and mistreatment. Pollack is always there; the old hunchbacked sadist is delighted when she hears a girl scream and groan. Here she feels herself to be in her element -- exploiting defenseless victims is the classic occupation of not only the male, but the female Jews as well.
Wheresoever the whirls and eddies of life might drive the Jew, he does not go under. He slowly rises to the surface again, finds others of the same attitude and of the same blood, allies himself with them -- and forms that hardly visible over-layer of the nations, which cut off their air, a class which has just been torn away from Germany. . .
true also of the world of professional sexual offenses, of prostitution. Among the ordinary prostitutes, the Jewesses comprise perhaps 8-10%, At the next level -- pimps and procuresses -- we find the Jewish share to be already 20%(1). And in the highest levels of the criminal demi-
monde, we meet almost exclusively Jews. As everywhere, we find
here, too, the continual Jewish "migration" upward: the Jewish prostitute is in her later years a procuress, owner of a dubious inn [analogous to today's 'hot-sheet' motels] or bordello hostess, while the young Jewish male street person, who has focused on homosexuals, becomes a pimp and, if he's lucky, also a white slaver.
[124] Within the Underworld, the pimp plays a significant role, for he is the binding glue between prostitution and criminality, he's the middle- man of the fence, the loan shark, and, naturally, the white slaver. More than this, he himself often steps into these roles and does not content himself with protecting prostitutes and living off their money, he also goes into business on his own initiative and plays banker to the
Underworld livelihoods, he knows the best sources for cocaine, he imparts instruction on dexterous card-handling in his local Kaschemme, he sells "sure things" in the betting office, keeps an eye out for "fresh goods" for bordellos -- the pimp is the factotum of the criminal world. With this internal connection, it is small wonder that it was precisely the pimps who played an especially prominent role in the numerous criminal organizations, the "ring clubs," which, as we already
discovered, were a particular ornament of the system of the time(1). In Berlin, there were, among others: the "Ring Groß-Berlin" [Great Berlin Ring], "Loge Groß-Berlin" [Great Berlin Lodge],
"Interessengemeinschaft" [Community of Interests], etc. The nimble, somewhat elegant pimp was the natural representative of these rings to the authorities, from whom they had less to fear than notorious burglars or fences did. From the outside, the organizations were innocent social, lottery or sport clubs, but in reality they were loci of support for the worst criminals, who could find material help, defense counsel or helpers there on the occasion of an arrest or a similar misfortune. "There must be a clever lawyer appointed for the criminal, food
packages sent to him while he was in custody awaiting trial, his family supported and consoled. Prosecution witnesses were intimidated, defense witnesses persuaded that they had really seen what they were supposed to have seen, and many a hard-to-produce alibi was cobbled together by hook or crook."
The fees were very high, the gentlemen members wore gold badges, their female companions dripped with stolen jewels, and at festivals
they marched with heavy, gold-embroidered banners. That's how they lived then -- before the National Socialist power take-over -- in "beauty and dignity." Under the pressure of "public opinion" and influential comrades, the authorities had to keep one eye, or even both, shut tight. They gathered in expensive pubs with the Jewish lawyers, who were as well-known for being advocates for the Underworld [125] as for the communists, and the pimp-song was sung with chests swollen with pride:
"Who should gobble up the whores' money If it weren't for us bastards!"
An investigation by B. von der Laan(1), which is devoted to the study of the pimp, shows with great clarity how deeply the pimp is rooted in the Underworld. The previous life of 134 pimps was studied. Only 12% of them had never been sentenced before, i.e., they were clever enough not to have let themselves get caught. For the rest, not less than 1096 previous sentences, an average of almost 10 per subject, were
demonstrated, and in particular: Offenses against morality . . . 20 fraud . . . 56
receiving stolen goods (fencing) . . . 59 embezzlement . . . 72
offenses against public order . . . . 107 gambling . . . 198
offenses of brutality . . . 107 theft . . . 284
There is no crime from which the genuine pimp would shrink! From what circles are pimps recruited? From all of them. The
streetwalker has for her pimp the work-shy young man who went rotten early in life, or the bull-necked thug of the suburb, who follows her