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.

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 City at the age of one month. From there, 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 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.

In November 1920, Birns' mother was tending to the 10-gallon still in their apartment, when a faulty gas connection caused an explosion. Her clothing caught fire and was engulfed in flames. She ran outside screaming, where a passing motorist helped extinguish the flames and drove her to the hospital. Horribly burned over 75 percent of her body, she died the next morning. Birns was 13 at the time of his mother's death. Birns was sheltered for a time in the old Jewish orphanage. He grew up, quickly taking a job as a newspaper boy during the tough circulation wars. Later on, he lived with his grandmother.

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