A tiny Borscht Belt town that beckons Orthodox Jewish vacationers in the summer staged a pivotal election this spring that was anything but kosher, according to an explosive lawsuit that has triggered a state investigation into alleged voter fraud.
Fleischmanns — a leafy hamlet at the foot of the Belleayre ski resort in the Catskills — has been thrown into chaos after two losing candidates for village trustee accused a pair of deep-pocketed Hasidic property owners of rigging the ballot box to install officials to rubber-stamp their development plans, according to the lawsuit obtained by The Post.
Businesses along the tree-lined Main Street and its 300 year-round locals are taking sides over the election held in March for two of the four trustee seats — a year after the other two seats were won by candidates backed by the same Hasidic residents, Josef Horowitz and Wigdor Mendlovic.
Voters in the historic village, named for the Fleischmann family that built the baking yeast empire, are hurling insults and accusing each other of bullying, anti-Semitism and fraud at public meetings, with some fretting over the future use of municipal facilities including the recently renovated town pool.
‘I believe the end game is to turn this into a religious community where the [Hasidic] lifestyle prevails,” Vicky Szerko, who owns a second home in Fleischmanns, told The Post.
