Abraham Shoenfeld, 1891-1977

Private investigator and writer, Abraham (Abe) Herman Shoenfeld, was born on April 24, 1891 to Meyer and Dora Shoenfeld, Hungarian Jews. Because his father was a political and labor organizer, Abraham grew up surrounded by major political figures and labor leaders. The Shoenfelds lived on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and in 1899, Meyer, with aid from the Baron de Hirsch Fund, helped form a New Jersey agricultural colony, now known as Kenilworth, where he resettled his own family and other Lower East Side Jewish families, mostly those involved in the tailoring business. 1 Abe Shoenfeld attended P.S. 20, graduating in 1905, and entered Stuyvesant High School, but dropped out at the end of his first year at age 15. 2

Young Shoenfeld developed an intimate knowledge of the Jewish criminal subculture on the Lower East Side. He first became an investigator for John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s Bureau of Social Hygiene, under George Kneeland in 1912, and on the foundation of Shoenfeld’s research into New York City’s vice and crime scene, Kneeland wrote the report, “Commercialized Prostitution in New York City,” published by the Bureau.

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