Testimony of Meyer C. Ellenstein, Newark city commissioner, July 11, 1951 (Kefauver Committee, Part 18, pp. 219 ff.)
A Newark city commissioner, first elected in 1933, tells the Kefauver Committee he knew Abner Zwillman by reputation, "as a bootlegger," before meeting him about 1935 or 1936.
- Date
- 1951-07-11
- Kind
- hearing
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- Investigation of Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, Hearings before the Special Committee, 82d Cong., Part 18: New York and New Jersey, pp. 219 ff.
- Rights
- A work of the United States Congress, printed by the Government Printing Office. Public domain in the United States under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The scan is of a GPO printing; Internet Archive marks it not in copyright. The stored page image was taken from the Internet Archive scan; quotations follow the Archive OCR, checked against the page image.
Printed in Part 18; the contents list gives “Ellenstein, Meyer C., city commissioner, Newark, N.J.” at page 219. He testified at the Newark executive session of July 11, 1951. Only the opening pages were read; the stored image is page 225.
Asked when he first became acquainted with Abner Zwillman, Ellenstein says: “Well, it was sometime after 1933. I would say about 3 or 4 years after that time. I was elected first in 1933,” and “So I met him along about ‘35 or ‘36.” Before that, “I knew him by reputation.” Asked what the reputation was: “He was engaged in liquor traffic.” Asked whether he knew Zwillman was in the liquor business while Ellenstein was practicing dentistry: “Yes; I learned that. It was common.” And: “Yes; I knew of him as a bootlegger.” He says he knew him “like I know thousands of other people in the city of Newark.”
The page records a public official’s answers about an acquaintance. It is not a finding about either man, and the later questioning about their dealings (pages 225 and following) was not read for this page.
