Bullet Apfelbaum

Bullet Apfelbaum is associated with the Jewish police of Newark during a period of mounting fear of anti-Semitic violence. His death in a shootout with city police becomes a grim reversal: the neighborhood had feared an attack by anti-Semites, but the night’s violence came from a clash between competing police forces, and its meaning remained disputed.

Role in Newark's Jewish Defense

Bullet Apfelbaum's Jewish police were on the streets through the night and remained there the next morning, patrolling while children made their way to school. Their presence was part of a community response to the danger, although school officials and a city representative emphasized additional city-police patrols rather than mentioning Bullet's force. The episode places him within Newark's unsettled landscape of public and community protection, without establishing his precise position or authority in the organization.

The Shootout and His Death

The firing lasted less than an hour. Afterward, the family learned that the gun battle had been between the Newark Police Department and the Jewish police of Newark, not between city police and anti-Semites. Bullet was one of three Jewish men killed, alongside Duke Glick and Big Gerry. The narrator emphasizes that Newark had experienced a shootout, not the feared pogrom, while acknowledging that the deaths occurred amid a wider climate of anti-Semitic agitation and fear.

Political Meaning and Uncertainty

The account does not settle on a single explanation for the killings. It suggests that the three men may have been targeted as violent figures whom the new mayor wanted removed from the streets, with the action also signaling to Longy Zwillman that he no longer enjoyed the standing he was rumored to have held under a previous mayor. The police commissioner's public account blamed the Jewish patrolmen for firing first, but the neighbors did not take that explanation seriously. Their lack of grief reflected the victims' reputation for violence, even as the deaths on a neighborhood street remained disturbing. Bullet's death thus marks the convergence of communal defense, political conflict, and the fear that violence against Jews might be imminent without making the shootout itself proof of a pogrom.