Mr. RUBY. He was about 4 years older than I am.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Over what period of time was Jack involved in trying to
break up these Bund meetings?
Mr. RUBY. In the early thirties there, I don’t remember.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you remember any other people who participated with him
in those?
Mr. RUBY. No; I don’t know their names.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was this a group of people or would Jack go alone?
Mr. RUBY. No, no; it was a group. But I don’t know the other names.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was it any sort of organized group? Was there an
organization that he belonged to?
Mr. RUBY. No; I don’t think it was an organization. It just was several
Jewish fellows and I don’t think they had an organization of any kind.
Just when they learned that meetings were taking place, they would go
there and try to break them up.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was Jack ever arrested in connection with any of those?
Mr. RUBY. Not as far as I know, because he has no arrest along those
lines at all.
In fact, the only violation he has, from what I could gather, was being
open after hours, and carrying concealed weapons which, from what I
understand, they don’t need a permit in Dallas, you know, when he
carried large sums of money.
Other than that—you must understand I was away from him, practically
from the time he went to Dallas until the incident. I only saw him for
short periods of time.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did you ever hear of the Dave Miller gang?
Mr. RUBY. Oh, yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What was the Dave Miller gang?
Mr. RUBY. Well, I read about them in the paper. I was just a school
kid then, but that was a gang that hung around Dave Miller’s fight
gymnasium, that is all I can remember. But I know something like that
existed.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How did they get newspaper publicity?
Mr. RUBY. I don’t know.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did Jack have anything to do with those people?
Mr. RUBY. He used to hang around Dave Miller’s gym but he was Barney
Ross’ follower like, and I think Barney Ross trained there and so he
was very close with him.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Well now, this group that was referred to as the Dave
Miller gang.
Mr. RUBY. Dave Miller was a referee.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Dave Miller was a referee?
Mr. RUBY. Yes; Davy Miller was a referee in Chicago for many years.
Mr. GRIFFIN. And he ran a gymnasium?
Mr. RUBY. Yes; to train the fighters.
Mr. GRIFFIN. And did Dave Miller have a following of some sort?
Mr. RUBY. Well, I would say it was—there was a restaurant downstairs
and it was a hangout. He owned the restaurant and the gym, and he was a
referee so the fighters hung around there and other people came around
to see the fighters, so it was a general hangout for people of that
type.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did the Dave Miller gang have anything to do with these
efforts to break up the Bund meetings?
Mr. RUBY. I think so, but I don’t have any concrete evidence. I think
they did.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Would you go ahead and tell us—let me ask you this,
rather. You say that your awareness of your brother’s, what we’ll call
involvement with his Jewish background or his position in society as a
person of Jewish background, was brought to your attention by someone
else. Who brought this to your attention?
Mr. RUBY. No; what was brought to my attention, I knew he was also
interested in the Jewish problem, but I didn’t think it entered into
this picture because I didn’t—this article here that was drawn up by
Sol Dann, who through his daughter, a friend of the family, became
interested in it because he could see what was in the background, and
he studied all the things and he got some information from me and he
talked to my brother, my sister and the psychiatrists on the case,
and the more he talked to them the more he could see that this was
an obsession with my brother, who probably didn’t realize it was as
great an obsession as it actually was, and that is probably one of the
reasons why Belli mentioned to me on a few occasions, “I can’t get
across to your brother. I don’t have a client.”
He says, “I have a patient, not a client.”
He mentioned that to me several times. He says, “I can’t get through to
your brother.”
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did he give any specific indications?
Mr. RUBY. No; I didn’t go any further either, because I thought Belli
was such a great lawyer. I say—I don’t even remember what I said, I
just—then he had psychiatrists, when the psychiatrist would interview
my brother he would talk to him afterward, and if ever I asked, I
mean, what they say, he says, “Well, they claim he is sick, he has got
this”—I don’t know the medical terms he used, you know, and so on and
so forth, and, “We have a good case, he is definitely sick,” and all
that, but the real problem. I mean the obsession itself, I don’t think
that even registered with Belli or the other psychiatrists, because
as far as I know—because it was never mentioned at the trial, and the
psychiatrists never mentioned it to us, and we didn’t think to tell it
to them, because we didn’t know if it had any importance or not, but we
find now in talking to the psychiatrists that it is of great importance
and it was probably one of the factors in his thinking the way he did.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What about Mr. Burleson—did he tell you during this
period, when you didn’t understand what he was talking about—what did
he tell you about Jack?
Mr. RUBY. Well, he was aloof from us. That was the big problem with
that trial.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Let me say, Mr. Ruby, I don’t want to, I am not asking you
to comment on the way Mr. Burleson conducted himself, but I am trying
to find out what it was he said to you about Jack which you didn’t
comprehend at the time.
Mr. RUBY. He said he is getting himself involved with all the Jews all
over the world on an international scale—“He is off his rocker”—that
was one of his——
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did he specify any of the things Jack was talking about?
Mr. RUBY. No; he used to say, “Jews all over the world, on an
international scale,” that was his expression several times and then,
of course, he stated, “He is off his rocker.”
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did Mr. Burleson tell you this sort of thing before the
trial, or only after the trial?
Mr. RUBY. Before and during, I would say.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Right.
Mr. RUBY. And not so much after, because after we were disgusted, I
will tell you that.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How long before the trial did Mr. Burleson begin to call
these problems about involvement with Jews.
Mr. RUBY. Right after he got involved. Because he lived in Dallas, and
he talked to my brother more so than anyone else because he lives there
and right after he got into the case, not a few days later, he says,
you know, made the statement again, “That your brother has got himself
involved with all the Jews on an international scale and he is off his
rocker, he doesn’t know what he is talking about.”
And to be truthful to you I didn’t understand his statement. It didn’t
register with me because they kept saying, Belli said, “Your brother is
sick. I have got a patient on my hands, you know. I am trying to take
care of your brother, and I can’t get across to him.”
And my brother, I know, he had many fights because of the Jewish
question, of being called, you know, names, referring to his Jewish
parents and all that stuff, and, of course, I have been through it
myself but he more so, and he fought more about it.
He was always quick tempered and just couldn’t take it.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What other fights did he get involved in because of the
Jewish question?
Mr. RUBY. Many fights. I know on several occasions he came home once
with his suit full of blood from downtown.
He was downtown Chicago. I said, “What happened?”
He said, “Somebody called me a dirty Jew or something like that.”
Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you know who he fought with on that occasion?
Mr. RUBY. No, no; there are many instances that my older brothers and
sisters know of because I was younger, 4 years younger and in his
teens, early teens, I didn’t go with him because 4 years makes a big
difference, and I went my way and he went his way.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How old was Jack at the time that you saw him with this
suit full of blood?
Mr. RUBY. This goes back now, if I recall in 1946, I think, 1946.
Mr. GRIFFIN. This was after he got out of the service?
Mr. RUBY. Yes, yes; he told me he had several fights in the service
regarding this. He told me he had fights with a professional
heavyweight in the service because he said something about the Jews.
My brother was so Jewish conscious that it didn’t make any difference
whether he said, swore at him for being a Jew or he swore at somebody
else a half a block away. He would get in there and fight right away,
you know, unless they apologized and what have you. And he—so this,
checking into it from what the psychiatrists tell me, he went out of
his way to show the gentiles that in their thinking that all the Jews
are no good or money grabbers or what have you, here was a nice guy
that went out of his way—and didn’t have the money—to help anybody he
could.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you have any examples of this from the period that you
worked with him at Earl Products?