Arthur Simon will be brought before the Grand Jury or a magistrate’s court to answer a complaint made by Abraham Gellis that Simon demanded a bribe from him, Assistant District Attorney James Garrett Wallace announced late Friday. Simon will deny the charge and will counter with a contention he has been “framed. “
Commissioner John L. Rice, under personal instruction from Mayor LaGuardia, who was reported much distressed over the incident, has temporarily suspended Simon as confidential food investigator for the Health Department pending complete investigation.
“I completely deny the charges and will establish my innocence,” Simon told the Jewish Daily Bulletin Friday evening. “I believe an attempt is being made to discredit me. “
“A trap we prepared for Simon was not completely successful,” Wallace said, “but I think enough has developed to warrant thrashing the thing out in open court.” No definite date has been set for the hearing yet, he declared.
Gellis, an official of Isaac Gellis Inc. , provisions firm which Simon’s department accuses of violation of the kosher food law, told the Assistant District Attorney that Simon had offered to “fix” a summons on that charge in return for $250.
On Wednesday afternoon Gellis and his attorney went before Wallace at the District Attorney’s offices and gave him purported facts which led to an inquiry.
MADE APPOINTMENT
On Wallace’s advice Gellis, with one of the District Attorney’s detectives standing nearby, telephoned Simon at the Health Department and made an appointment to meet him on Wednesday evening.
Simon, according to both his own and Gellis’ story, first asked the latter to come to a law office downtown.
“No, I haven’t all the money yet,” the food provisions executive and the detective claim Gellis replied.
DENIES MONEY REFERENCE
Simon denies having heard any reference made to money in the telephone conversation.
The Broadway Central Hotel was eventually decided upon as the meeting place. Simon had already planned to go there to attend an attempted conciliation between rabbis and slaughterers.
That evening, carrying five fifty-dollar bills, whose serial numbers he had given to detectives, Gellis met Simon at the Broadway Central. Three detectives were stationed there, watching the two men.
TAKES SUMMONS
They saw Gellis hand Simon a summons, which later was found on his person. Simon says he took the summons to correct it, since it had been made out in pencil and charged merely a violation of the penal law, instead of containing the specific section under which the alleged kosher law violation had occurred.
Gellis insists Simon had said he would “fix” the summons. He told Wallace he tried to give Simon the money then, but Simon, according to Gellis’ statement, asked, “Why didn’t you put it in an envelope?”
ENCLOSED BILLS
Thereupon, Gellis says, he obtained an envelope in the hotel lobby and enclosed the $250 in it, writing Simon’s name on its face.
Afterwards, the two men went to the lavatory together, with a detective following them unknown to Simon. Here, Gellis says, he turned over the envelope to Simon.
This Simon denies. The detective says he was behind a partition and therefore was unable to see exactly what transpired.
According to a prearranged signal, Gellis was to have pulled at the brim of his hat after the money purportedly had changed hands.
FAILED TO SEE SIGNAL
The food provisions executive claims he gave this signal immediately after he and Simon had left the lavatory. Detectives said if this was true they had failed to notice it.
In the lobby, however, they took Simon into custody and searched him, first in the hotel and later at the District Attorney’s office. In his possession they found the summons, which he readily admitted having taken from Gellis, but which he insisted he had solely for the purpose of correcting it.
ENVELOPE FOUND
Later that night the Broadway Central manager, who had seen Simon taken into custody, learned that a Negro employe of his, who has worked in the hotel for seventeen years, had found an envelope, marked Arthur Simon,” in the elevator. The manager opened it and found in it the five fifty-dollar bills. These he turned over to police at the Mercer Street station house.
Gellis, at the District Attorney’s offices Wednesday afternoon gave Wallace his version of the background of the case. He described a visit that Maurice Goldstein, one of Simon’s investigators had paid to the Gellis establishment Monday afternoon, when, he said, Joseph Langsner and his brother, neither of them Gellis employes, were delivering briskets to the concern. Gellis’ grandfather, Samuel Glass, seventy-one, also was on the premises.
Goldstein inspected the briskets and said at least one of them had no plombe, or tag, signifying rabbinical supervision He also charged there was no rabbi on the premises, a fact which would constitute a kosher law violation.
A fight followed, during which Goldstein charged the aged Glass and the Langsners assaulted him, allegedly injuring him severely and knocking out two teeth.
The investigator then telephoned the Health Department, which gave him permission to make a summary arrest of the three men. He returned to the Gellis building and made the arrests. Early that evening he went back again and served a summons accusing the Gellis establishment of a kosher law violation. This summons the detectives subsequently found in Simon’s possession.
Gellis declares that although no rabbi was on the premises during Goldstein’s first visit, the firm was nonetheless complying with the kosher laws in that a “mashgiach,” or kosher supervisor, was present at the time.
He told Assistant District Attorney Wallace that in his opinion Simon bears a grievance against his firm because Simon’s attempt to persuade Gellis to settle a libel suit against a Yiddish newspaper was unsuccessful.
To this Simon replies that Gellis, angry at being summoned to court to answer a kosher violation charge, which the food firm fears will severely damage its business, has set out to discredit him in reprisal for his determined campaign to wipe out infractions such as the one charged to the Gellis #rm.
The Gellis case and the assault count against Glass and Joseph Langsner will be tried in a magistrate’s court on November 20.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
