Alex Birns

Alex Birns (February 21, 1907 – March 29, 1975), best known as Shondor Birns was a notorious Jewish-American mobster and racketeer from Cleveland, Ohio who was once labeled as the city's "Public enemy No. 1" by the local newspapers. He was actively involved in a wide variety of racketeering and other organized crime related activities such as prostitution, theft, numbers, etc., from the days of Prohibition until his demise.

Biography

Early life

Alex Birns was born Alexander Birnstein in 1907 in the town of Lemes in a section of Austria-Hungary that went to Czechoslovakia under the Versailles treaty. His parents were Herman and Illon Birnstein. Youngest of three children, he was brought to New York at the age of one month. From New York City, the family moved to Cleveland, settling in the lower Woodland Avenue district.

Like many immigrant families, the Birnsteins Americanized their surname to Birns. Alexander's name was abbreviated to an English translation of Zander, but the Italian and Jewish neighbors took to calling the boy "Shondor" (as the Hungarian equivalent of "Alexander" is "Sándor", pronounced roughly as most Americans would pronounce "Shondor") and the name stuck. Like most families, the Birns family struggled to earn a living in the New World. Like many immigrants during Prohibition, they turned to bootlegging, taking in a small still from Cleveland Mafia boss Joe Lonardo to supplement their income and better provide for their children.