My friend Myron Sugarman has had a varied career – by his own word “gangster,” helper of Simon Wiesenthal in tracking down Nazis in South America, author of a spellbinding book on his life, and tireless emailer every day to two thousand “blind copy” followers on issues confronting us. In expressing his views, timidity isn’t his shtik. To get on his list, just email charming@eclipse.net. That’s not a typo. By me, Myron’s a sheyner yid, but if he’s “charming” then Yitzhak Shamir was the King of Kuwait.
My friend Myron Sugarman wrote a book in which he called himself “a Jewish gangster.” He didn’t deal in narcotics or prey on the public. “Myron sold and operated slot machines, jukeboxes, cigarette machine, and anything else that accepted coins and entertained people in bars, nightclubs, and other hangouts around the world.” Malum prohibitum, not malum in se.
Myron inscribed to me the copy of his book that he sent me. I’m deeply appreciative.
In chapter 15 of his most readable book, in which not all the narrow escapes he lived were from the Feds, Myron recounts some of the work, at no small personal risk, he undertook in South America in consultation with and in aid of relentless Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. So Myron, now in his late eighties, had more than gangster Jewish connections in his long colorful career. His book, The Chronicles of the Last Jewish Gangster: From Meyer to Myron, makes quite a read.
