Neo-Nazi who inspired ‘American History X’ now an observant Jew
Skinhead convict turned anti-hate lecturer tells New York Post he embraced Jewish faith after 23andMe found he has Ashkenazi DNA
Frank Meeink, the former white supremacist gang member who inspired the 1998 crime drama “American History X,” now keeps kosher, observes Shabbat, and studies Torah three times a week, The New York Post reported Tuesday.
“I found out by a beautiful gift from God that I was Jewish through DNA,” Meeink told the Post.
A 23AndMe test Meeink took after a friend told him he “looked Jewish” showed Meeink was 2.4 percent Ashkenazi Jewish — through his mother’s maternal great-grandmother, which would imply that Jewish ritual law considers him Jewish as well.
Meeink, who spent three years in jail for kidnapping and torturing an anti-fascist activist in 1992 — when Meeink was 17 — renounced his racist ways after befriending prisoners of other ethnicities, and went on to lecture about overcoming prejudice. In 2020 he testified before the United States Congress about neo-Nazi efforts to infiltrate the police.
Having struggled with drug addiction his whole life, Meeink told the Post that the 2019 breakdown of his marriage and deaths of his son and his mother drove him to recovery. In rehab, he said, he met a Jewish man, his “recovery rabbi,” with whom he speaks every morning.
“In recovery it says, ‘Find the God of your understanding.’ And that’s when I was like, ‘I’m really going to check into this,'” the Post quoted Meeink as saying
Escaping his abusive household in Philadelphia at 13, Meeink found refuge with his neo-Nazi cousin. He joined the Ku Klux Klan, split off to found his own skinhead collective, and starred in a local-access television channel where he railed against Black people, Jews, and “the Zionist occupation government.”
Edward Norton, whose “American History X” character Derek Vineyard was based on Meeink, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.
