Early Life
Benjamin Siegelbaum was born in 1906 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to a poor Jewish family from Letychiv, Podolia Governorate of the Russian Empire, in modern Ukraine. His immigrant parents, Max and Jennie, raised five children, including Ben, on meager wages. Siegel allegedly vowed that he would rise above that life. As a boy, Siegel dropped out of school and joined a gang on Lafayette Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and committed mainly thefts, until, with a youth named Moe Sedway, he devised his own protection racket: pushcart merchants were forced to pay him a dollar or he would incinerate their merchandise. Siegel had an extensive record of crime, including armed robbery, rape, and murder dating back to his teenage years.
Read more about this topic: Bugsy Siegel
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The conviction that the best way to prepare children for a harsh, rapidly changing world is to introduce formal instruction at an early age is wrong. There is simply no evidence to support it, and considerable evidence against it. Starting children early academically has not worked in the past and is not working now.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)