He wasn't a Nazi

Marion Volini won the support of many Jewish residents of senior citizen buildings in her 1978 Independent Aldermanic campaign in the 48th ward.

Elderly Jews were the core of Machine support in Chicago neighborhoods. Their allegiance to the Democratic Party could be traced to their adoration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression. And their willingness to follow the dictates of the precinct captain was an established Chicago tradition.

So, "defecting" to Volini was a big setback to the Machine, and it had to find a way to win back those votes.

The Democratic precinct captain in the Kenmore Plaza Apartments, a senior citizen building in Edgewater, set out to reclaim what he felt was his vote by telling Jewish voters that Volini had been endorsed by a prominent Nazi, and he pointed to a German-surnamed member of her Citizens' Committee as the evil guy.

Many of those voters, including Volini's own supporters, believed the charge. They still liked her, but quite a few had been victims of Irish anti-Semitism when growing up in Chicago and thought she either didn't know the man was a Nazi, or, because she was Irish (her maiden name was Kennedy), didn't understand how serious that was.

So, she met with the residents, who asked fearfully, "Is it true?"

"No," she told them, dismissing the charge as completely baseless. She was accompanied by the man who had been named by the captain and introduced him to the group.

"He's not a Nazi," one of them proclaimed, "He's our neighbor!" They realized they had been lied to.

Volini won the precinct and she won the election.

Excerpted from “Chicago Political Stories” at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/994143

You can get more Marion Volini stories in “An Inside Job: A Frank Recollection of 48th Ward Happenings” at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/992452