Weekend, May 15 -16, 2021 – From the Prison on Welfare Island to Israel

By admin

WEEKEND, MAY 15-16, 2021

The 364th Edition

Mickey Marcus:

Two-Time War Hero

and

Roosevelt Island

A SPECIAL PROGRAM CELEBRATION ED LOGUE AND THE DEVELOPMENT
OF ROOSEVELT ISLAND

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David “Mickey” Marcus Wikipedia

Mickey Marcus: Two-Time War Hero and Roosevelt Island

Stephen Blank

David “Mickey” Marcus never lived here, but he had an exciting and important link to our Island. Read on. Marcus was a 1924 West Point grad, up from a tough youth on the Lower East Side. At West Point, he lettered in boxing and football, and graduated in 1924 as an infantry second lieutenant. During his first assignment, on Governor’s Island, Marcus studied law at night school and married. Rather than take up his next duty assignment, in Puerto Rico, Marcus resigned his Regular Army commission and went to work as a law clerk in New York. A year later, he received a degree from Brooklyn Law School.

First War.

Marcus had maintained a Reserve commission and in 1940, Lt. Col. Marcus’ Guard unit was federalized. After the onset of war, Marcus sought a field command, but instead became chief of planning for the War Department’s Civil Affairs. Here, he served as a legal and military government adviser at some of the war’s most important conferences – Cairo in 1943; Dumbarton Oaks, where the UN was born; and Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam. According to the citation for his Distinguished Service Medal (an unusually high service decoration for a colonel), Marcus played a key role in the ‘negotiation and drafting of the Italian Surrender Instrument, the Instrument of Unconditional Surrender of Germany, and the international machinery to be used for the control of Germany after her total defeat.’

He did make one trip to the front. In early May 1944, he got himself to London ‘to provide liaison and act as observer in the implementation of military government policies for France.’ Then he disappeared. Without telling anyone, he had wangled his way onto a plane and parachuted into Normandy with the 101st Airborne Division – although he had never jumped from an airplane before. Once on the ground in Normandy, Marcus led several patrols, engaging in firefights with German units and freeing a group of captured US paratroopers. Back in Washington, his boss finally had to issue the order: ‘Find Marcus. Arrest him if you have to–but send him back!’ Shortly after that, Marcus was on a plane to the United States, still in his dirty field uniform.

Their faces displaying a variety of emotions, these paratroopers from the 101st Airborne prepare to take off in a C-47 “Skytrain” on D-Day.

Immediately after the end of the fighting in Europe, Marcus worked with the occupation and became head the Pentagon’s War Crimes Division, responsible for selecting the judges, prosecutors and lawyers for the major war crimes trials in Germany and Japan. Marcus turned down a promotion to brigadier general and an assignment military attach at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to return to civilian life.

Second War But soon, Marcus began a new task, to help organize and train the army of the soon-to-be-born Israeli state. Reporting directly to future Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, Marcus’s recommendations would help transform a largely underground organization into an effective strike force. Once again, he moved from staff into the front line. Marcus was instrumental in building a new road under fire from Tel Aviv to beleaguered Jerusalem. His actions won him a promotion into the top most ranks of the Israeli army

Road to Jerusalem
Burma_Road_(Israel)

The night before the cease-fire that would end the war took effect, Marcus and his staff held a celebration in the ancient village of Abu Ghosh, some eight miles east of Jerusalem. In the early morning hours, Marcus went for a walk and was shot dead by a sentry who failed to recognize him. Marcus became the first soldier buried at West Point who had died fighting under another nation’s flag.

OK. An interesting, brave guy. But what about Roosevelt Island? Here’s the connection

Between 1930 and 1934, Marcus was an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York. When La Guardia became New York mayor on a reform ticket in 1934, he appointed Marcus deputy commissioner of corrections. One of Marcus’ first actions was a special police raid on the corruption-ridden and prisoner-controlled penitentiary on Welfare Island.

(SB: Much of the next paragraphs come from TIME’s coverage of the raid – TIME at its absolute best, delightful, bare knuckle reporting.)

“Early one morning last week several carloads of men, led by New York City’s thin, purse-lipped new Commissioner of Correction Austin Harbutt MacCormick and his stocky aid David Marcus, descended the elevator from the Queensboro Bridge, made Welfare Island a surprise visit. By sundown Commissioner MacCormick had lifted the lid off Welfare Island and given city, state and nation a terrifying glimpse into the nether depths of prison life. ‘The worst prison in the world,’ pronounced Commissioner MacCormick, whom new Fusion Mayor LaGuardia had enlisted from the Federal Bureau of Prisons to clean up penal scandals left by years of Tammany rule. ‘The most corrupt prison in the country, physically and from every other standpoint. . . . A vicious circle of depravity that is almost beyond the ability of the imagination to grasp!’”

First stop on MacCormick’s raiding party was a cell-block tenanted by narcotic addicts who whimpered in their blankets, begged their visitors for “just a little shot.” In their littered cells were found electric stoves, pots, pans, hatchets, butcher knives, lengths of lead pipe, needle-pointed stilettos… To the police it looked more like a hop house than a prison.

“The dregs of the prison’s life were still howling disconsolately among the debris of their possessions when the raiders turned their attention to the prison’s hierarchy. Sixty-eight prisoners…virtually ran Welfare Island. They cowed their guards through outside political influence. They sold to some 500 inmates the best of vegetables and meats… Since the food was looted from the prison commissary, the other 1,200 prisoners virtually starved on greasy cold stews.

In addition, the ring sold narcotics, provided monied prisoners with clothing filched from newcomers, even had a strong voice in the granting of paroles. Divided between an Irish and an Italian gang, the hierarchy lived soft in two hospital wards, while men who should have been hospitalized—100 drug addicts, more than 100 venereal cases, 13 insane patients and one man suffering with sleeping sickness—roamed at large through the prison spreading demoralization and infection.”

Irish leader was Edward Cleary, a “graduate” of Sing Sing….  “Italian leader was a big swarthy gunman named Joie Rao, kept sleek and well-pressed by his underlings. Rao, onetime boxer, was shaving when Marcus ordered him to get along with the rest of his henchmen to solitary cells. Prisoner Rao insolently remarked that he would when he finished his toilet. Deputy Marcus, a boxer in his time at West Point, made short shrift of that kind of talk.

But Commissioner MacCormick had not sounded the most deplorable depths of Welfare Island until he went to the mess hall at noon. In fluttered a huge chorus of perverts, their lips and cheeks blushing with rouge, their eyes darkened with mascara, their hair flowing long. In their cells were found heaps of feminine underclothes, nightgowns, perfume, lipsticks, suntan powder. They were confined to the laundry during work hours, but at other times were not segregated. Unless close watch was kept on these tainted characters, other prisoners would fight as desperately for their favor as they would for a woman’s.”

How can you top this stuff? The New York Times gave top front page billing to the raid, headlining “Welfare Island Raid Bares Gangsters Rule Over Prison; Weapons, Narcotics Found”.  Extensive, meaty, but not quite the bombastic heights of TIME.

The warden’s house included an in-ground swimming pool

Ah, but the story doesn’t quite end here.

On July 17, the Times reported that “a large patch of marijuana weed, a plant from which a narcotic smoked in the form of cigarettes is derived, was found, growing wild yesterday in the ground of the Welfare Island penitentiary…. It was believed that the weeds were being grown by prisoners assigned to duty outside the cell blocks. After yesterday’s discovery Deputy Commissioner David Marcus ordered Warden Lazarus Levy to assign workmen to destroy the weeds. The workmen, prisoners at the penitentiary, carefully pulled up every weed and burned it.” That must have been a very enjoyable task. So that’s the story of a tough, smart kid from the LES, a hero in two wars and a key figure in our Island’s history.

PS – Ted Berkman’s book Cast a Giant Shadow: The Story of Mickey Marcus Who Died to Save Jerusalem was made into a film by the same name starring Kirk Douglas. Neither got great reviews.

Stephen Blank
RIHS
May 12, 2021

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Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by  Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated

STEPHEN BLANK
Sources

https://www.historynet.com/david-mickey-marcus.htm https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/hillary-clinton-roosevelt-island-history-118970 http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,929635,00.html

New York Times, January 25, 1934, July 17, 1934

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