Leon L. Lewis
{{Short description|American attorney, spymaster, and non-profit executive (1888-1954)}}
{{For|other people named Leon Lewis|Leon Lewis (disambiguation){{!}}Leon Lewis}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Leon L. Lewis
| birth_name = Leon L. Lewis
| birth_date = {{birth date|1888|9|5|mf=y}}
| birth_place = Hurley, Wisconsin, U.S.
| death_date = {{death date and age|1954|5|20|mf=y|1888|9|5}}
| death_place = Pacific Palisades, California, U.S.
| occupation = Attorney
| known for = Anti-Nazi Spymaster
| spouse = {{marriage|Ruth Lewis|1920}}
| children = 2
}}
Leon Lawrence Lewis (September 5, 1888 – May 20, 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."{{cite book |last=Rosenzweig |first=Laura |date=2017 |title=Hollywood's Spies: The Undercover Surveillance of Nazis in Los Angeles |url=https://nyupress.org/books/9781479855179/ |location=New York |publisher=NYU Press |isbn=978-1-4798-5517-9 }}{{cite book |last=Ross |first=Steven |date=2017 |title=Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America |url=https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/hitler-in-los-angeles-9781620405642/ |location=New York |publisher=Bloomsbury |isbn=978-1-62040-564-2 }}{{cite news |author= |title=Leon L. Lewis |work=New York Times |page=15 |date=May 22, 1954 |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/112936600/sem-2 |access-date=November 5, 2024 }}{{cite magazine |last=Goodyear |first=Dana |date=September 25, 2017 |title=The Nazi Sites of Los Angeles |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/25/the-nazi-sites-of-los-angeles |magazine=The New Yorker |access-date=May 6, 2018 }}
Early life
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{{cite news|title=Leon L. Lewis, Jewish Leader, Succumbs at 65 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22361461/leon_l_lewis_18881954/|newspaper=The Los Angeles Times|date=May 22, 1954|page=11|via = Newspapers.com|accessdate = July 31, 2018 }} {{Open access}} and George Washington University. Lewis received a J.D. degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1913. He was fluent in English, German, and Yiddish.Maddow, Rachel (2023). Prequel (1st ed.). Crown. pp. 79. {{ISBN|978-0-593-44451-1}}.
Career
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 antisemitic statements from U.S. Army training manuals. 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. He was a member of the Disabled American Veterans of America.
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. He fought against Henry Ford's rampant antisemitism, as well as that of other prominent antisemites.
Lewis and his family moved to Los Angeles in the late 1920s, 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.{{cite news |last=Morrison |first=Patt |date=September 27, 2017 |title=How Hitler's fascism almost took hold in Los Angeles |url=https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-ol-patt-morrison-steven-ross-nazi-los-angeles-20170927-htmlstory.html |work=Los Angeles Times |access-date=February 10, 2022}} It received funding from all of the Hollywood studio moguls and worked in cooperation with local and federal authorities.{{cite news |last=Ross |first=Steven |date=November 4, 2018 |title=Eighty years before Pittsburgh, Kristallnacht emboldened Nazis in Los Angeles |url=http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ross-kristallnacht-anniversary-los-angeles-20181104-story.html |work=Los Angeles Times |access-date=November 4, 2018 }} However, assistance from the Los Angeles Police Department was limited due to Chief James Davis' antisemitism and fascist sympathies. The FBI also had few actionable counterintelligence resources and were more focused on combating communism.
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. They frequented the Alt Heidelberg, gaining intelligence on Los Angeles Nazis there. 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 in 1933. In 1936, Lewis's ring uncovered another fascist plot. Ingram Hughes, founder of the fascist and antisemitic American Nationalist Party, planned a mass lynching of twenty public officials and private citizens in Los Angeles, whom Hughes blamed for the city's "lawlessness, liquor and crime." Hughes also planned to kill Lewis and Mendel Silberberg if they attempted to interfere. He hoped that the lynchings would inspire a nationwide uprising against Jews.
"I'll be glad to see some of those sons of bitches on the end of ropes, and the sooner the better. Each man we hang will be an example of a specific case, and what a representative group it will be, too. Busby Berkeley will look good dangling on a rope’s end, his money won't be any good here. Another of his type will be Tamany [sic], the fellow that had the ill-reputed girl show in Hollywood; and while we're at it we may as well get the two Main Street Jews that own the burlesque theatres there. Leave it to the Jews to live and thrive on the weaknesses of mankind. Judge Willis will make a good example for letting Guy Colvin off as he did. The sooner we get these Jew sons of bitches and their Gentile fronts on ropes the better."{{Cite thesis |last=Rosenzweig |first=Laura |title=Hollywood's Spies: Jewish Infiltration of Nazi and Pro-Nazi Groups in Los Angeles, 1933-1941 |date=2013 |publisher=UC Santa Cruz |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2sm4c6gn |language=en}}In 1934, Congress investigated West Coast Nazis using the spy ring's evidence, but little of it was ever released to the public.
With help from his assistant Joseph Roos,{{cite news |last=Abrams |first=Nathan |date=February 15, 2018 |title=Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood and America, by Steven J. Ross |url=https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/review-hitler-in-los-angeles-steven-j-ross-bloomsbury |work=Times Higher Education |access-date=September 27, 2020}} 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.
Personal life
Lewis married Ruth Lowenberg in 1920, and the couple had two daughters, Rosemary Mazlo (1922–1980) and Claire Read (1928–2015). He died of a heart attack on May 20, 1954 in Pacific Palisades, California.
Legacy
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.{{cite web |url=https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8cf9s8x/ |title=Guide to the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, Community Relations Committee Collection, Part 1 |author= |date=2020 |publisher=Online Archive of California |access-date=November 5, 2024 }}{{cite web |url=https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8wh2s6q/ |title=Guide to the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, Community Relations Committee Collection, Part 2 |author= |publisher=Online Archive of California |access-date=November 5, 2024 }}
In popular culture
Leon Lewis is featured in the 2022 podcast Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra{{cite web |url=https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra |title=Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra |website=MSNBC }} for his heroic role in exposing the plot by the Silver Shirts{{cite web |url= http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2020/11/22/fascism-in-1930s-america-the-silver-shirts |title=Fascism in 1930s America: The Silver Shirts|date=25 November 2020 }} 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,{{cite magazine |last=Grossman |first=Cathy Lynn |date=March 8, 2023 |title=A Novel Thriller Offers Spiritual Truths |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/religion/article/91683-a-novel-thriller-offers-spiritual-truths.html |magazine=Publishers Weekly |access-date=May 19, 2023}} 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).{{cite web |url=https://stephanielandsem.com/nazis-in-hollywood-it-really-happened/ |title=Nazis in Hollywood? It really happened |last=Landsem |first=Stephanie |date=September 9, 2021 |website=Illuminating History Through Fiction |access-date=May 19, 2023}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- {{Find a Grave|112307765}}
{{Anti-Defamation League}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lewis, Leon L.}}
Category:People from Los Angeles
Category:People from Hurley, Wisconsin
Category:Military personnel from Milwaukee
Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni
Category:George Washington University alumni
Category:University of Chicago Law School alumni
Category:United States Army personnel of World War I
Category:American anti-fascists