News | March 27, 2025

'Mob's Accountant' Meyer Lansky's Letter Archive to Auction

Heritage Auctions

The Meyer Lansky archive

Heritage Auctions’ March 28 Historical Manuscripts features more than 600 letters written by Meyer Lansky, who along with Charles 'Lucky' Luciano was instrumental in building the National Crime Syndicate in the US, to his secret Israeli love, Zali de Toledo.

With topics including Lansky’s effort to get permission to return to Israel, Israel’s and the United States’ political and military challenges, and personal matters such as his ongoing romantic affair with de Toledo and family news, the letters ioffer a window into the mind of the mob’s financial genius.

“I kept the letters and cherished them for a long, long time, but I’m 82 years old now, and I thought to sell them to a collector so that they will keep them and cherish them too,” said de Toledo of her decision to sell her archive. “It’s also my case to show the world that [Lansky] was not the kind of person they wanted to show he was. He was a deep thinker and a very loving man.”

Forty years de Toledo’s senior, Lanksy met her while she was working as a waitress in Tel Aviv’s Dan hotel lobby. Their friendship quickly blossomed into a love affair that spanned his time in Israel and lasted until his death. Their romance was the subject of her 2020 memoir They Called Him a Gangster.

Also included in the auction is the fresh-to-market archive of Christian Rath, the military officer who carried out the execution of the Lincoln Conspirators. Rath, the provost marshal in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, details his thoughts and emotions before, during and after the 1865 trial.

Rath’s letters to his wife capture the human side of history, first with Rath as a Union officer leading his men into battle, then as provost marshal, and finally as the man tasked with jailing and executing the Lincoln Conspirators. They were stored by his family and passed from one generation to the next.

Other highlights of the auction include:

an Abraham Lincoln carte de viste by photographer Matthew Brady signed “A. Lincoln.”
a Warren Buffett letter to a retired Dean Witter branch manager illustrating Buffett’s code of ethics
a jubilant campaign typed letter signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and 12 additional presidents including Barack Obama and Donald Trump
a polygraph copy of Thomas Jefferson’s address to the Cherokee Nation, signed and dated three days after the Treaty of Washington, the first time this particular copy has come to auction