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Leon L. Lewis

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For other people named Leon Lewis, see Leon Lewis.
Leon L. Lewis
Born
Leon L. Lewis

(1888-09-05)September 5, 1888
Hurley, Wisconsin, U.S.
DiedMay 21, 1954(1954-05-21) (aged 65)
Pacific Palisades, California, U.S.
OccupationAttorney
Known forAnti-Nazi Spymaster
Spouse
Ruth Lewis
​
(m. 1920)​
Children2

Leon Lawrence Lewis (September 5, 1888 – May 21, 1954) was an American attorney, the first national secretary of the Anti-Defamation League, the national director of B'nai B'rith, the founder and first executive director of the Los Angeles Jewish Community Relations Committee, and a key figure in the spy operations that infiltrated American Nazi organizations in the 1930s and early 1940s. The Nazis referred to Lewis as "the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles."[1][2][3][4]

Early life

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Lewis was the son of Casper and Rachel Lewis, German Jewish immigrants who migrated to Wisconsin. He grew up in Milwaukee and attended the University of Wisconsin[5] and George Washington University. Lewis received a J.D. degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1913.[2] He was fluent in English, German, and Yiddish.[6]

Career

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After graduating from law school, Lewis accepted the position of national secretary of the Anti-Defamation League, and began to work on discrimination cases in the Midwest. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Lewis enlisted—but first, through the ADL, convinced President Wilson to order the removal of all anti-Semitic statements from U.S. Army training manuals.[6] Lewis served in the Army infantry and Army intelligence in Germany, France, and England, rising to the rank of major. He stayed in Germany for six months after the end of the war, primarily to care for wounded soldiers and achieve recompense for families of the dead.[6] He was a member of the Disabled American Veterans of America.[6]

In 1919 he returned to the U.S. and resumed his work fighting antisemitism for the ADL in Chicago and other parts of the Midwestern United States.[2] He fought against Henry Ford's rampant anti-Semitism, as well as that of other prominent anti-Semites.[6]

Lewis and his family moved to Los Angeles in the late 1920s,[5] where he founded the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee (later known as the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, Community Relations Committee). From this committee, he launched a major anti-Nazi spy ring and intelligence gathering operation.[7] It received funding from all of the Hollywood studio moguls and worked in cooperation with local and federal authorities.[8] However, assistance from the Los Angeles Police Department was limited due to Chief James Davis' anti-Semitism and fascist sympathies.[6] The FBI also had few actionable counterintelligence resources and were more focused on combating communism.[6]

The spy ring primarily recruited non-Jewish American WWI veterans, who were especially likely to be recruited to join the Nazi Party; Lewis had particular influence with veterans due to his extensive prior pro bono work for them.[6] They frequented the Alt Heidelberg, gaining intelligence on Los Angeles Nazis there.[6] They also foiled a plot by U.S. Marines to sell weapons to American fascists, and exposed Dietrich Gefken's plan to take over West Coast military armories.[6]

In 1934, Congress investigated West Coast Nazis using the spy ring's evidence, but little of it was ever released to the public.[6]

With help from his assistant Joseph Roos,[9] Lewis' work as spymaster resulted in the successful prosecution of multiple American Nazis before and during World War II, and the prevention of many acts of Nazi sabotage and assassinations on the West Coast of the United States. Lewis served as executive director of the Community Relations Committee for 17 years, after which he returned to his law practice.[2][1]

Personal life

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Lewis married Ruth Lowenberg in 1920, and the couple had two daughters, Rosemary Mazlo (1922–1980) and Claire Read (1928–2015).[2] He died of a heart attack on May 21, 1954 in Pacific Palisades, California.[3][5]

Legacy

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Lewis' personal and professional papers are archived in the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, Community Relations Committee Collection held in the University Library at California State University, Northridge.[10][11]

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Leon Lewis is featured in the 2022 podcast Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra[12] for his heroic role in exposing the plot by the Silver Shirts[13] and other heavily armed pro-Nazi groups in the U.S. to overthrow the federal government and install a fascist regime. Lewis is also featured as one of the protagonists in the 2023 historical fiction novel Code Name Edelweiss by Stephanie Landsem,[14] as well as a character (renamed "Ari Lewis") in two novels by Susan Elia MacNeal: The Hollywood Spy (2021) and Mother Daughter Traitor Spy (2022).[15]

References

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  1. ^ a b Rosenzweig, Laura (2017). Hollywood's Spies: The Undercover Surveillance of Nazis in Los Angeles. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 978-1-4798-5517-9.
  2. ^ a b c d e Ross, Steven (2017). Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America. New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-62040-564-2.
  3. ^ a b "Leon L. Lewis". New York Times. May 22, 1954. p. 15. Retrieved November 5, 2024.
  4. ^ Goodyear, Dana (September 25, 2017). "The Nazi Sites of Los Angeles". The New Yorker. Retrieved May 6, 2018.
  5. ^ a b c "Leon L. Lewis, Jewish Leader, Succumbs at 65". The Los Angeles Times. May 22, 1954. p. 11. Retrieved July 31, 2018 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Maddox, Rachel (2023). Prequel (1st ed.). Crown. pp. 79. ISBN 978-0-593-44451-1.
  7. ^ Morrison, Patt (September 27, 2017). "How Hitler's fascism almost took hold in Los Angeles". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  8. ^ Ross, Steven (November 4, 2018). "Eighty years before Pittsburgh, Kristallnacht emboldened Nazis in Los Angeles". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 4, 2018.
  9. ^ Abrams, Nathan (February 15, 2018). "Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood and America, by Steven J. Ross". Times Higher Education. Retrieved September 27, 2020.
  10. ^ "Guide to the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, Community Relations Committee Collection, Part 1". Online Archive of California. 2020. Retrieved November 5, 2024.
  11. ^ "Guide to the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, Community Relations Committee Collection, Part 2". Online Archive of California. Retrieved November 5, 2024.
  12. ^ "Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra". MSNBC.
  13. ^ "Fascism in 1930s America: The Silver Shirts". 25 November 2020.
  14. ^ Grossman, Cathy Lynn (March 8, 2023). "A Novel Thriller Offers Spiritual Truths". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved May 19, 2023.
  15. ^ Landsem, Stephanie (September 9, 2021). "Nazis in Hollywood? It really happened". Illuminating History Through Fiction. Retrieved May 19, 2023.
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