Leon L. Lewis

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."

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 and George Washington University. Lewis received a J.D. degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1913.

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. It received funding from all of the Hollywood studio moguls and worked in cooperation with local and federal authorities. However, assistance from the Los Angeles Police Department was limited due to Chief James Davis' antisemitism and fascist sympathies. In 1934, Congress investigated West Coast Nazis using the spy ring's evidence, but little of it was ever released to the public. 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.

Historical Marker

August 20, 2025, Hurley, Wisconsin, Lewis' birthplace, a historical marker recognizing and honoring his accomplishments on behalf of all Americans was dedicated. The marker is sited in front of the Iron County Historical Museum in Hurley.

The marker was donated by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. It was made possible with the significant support of the Iron County Historical Society and the Hurley Community.

The Text of the marker:

"Leon Lewis, a Jewish Los Angeles attorney, ran an anti-Nazi spy ring from 1933 to 1941. Born in Hurley, Wisconsin, Lewis obtained his law degree in 1913 from the University of Chicago and served in the US Army in France during WWI. Lewis later was the first national executive secretary of B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League and founder of the Los Angeles Jewish Community Relations Committee. Because of governmental indifference, even sympathy to rising fascism in the 1930s, Lewis enlisted non-Jewish WWI veterans to infiltrate Nazi organizations in Southern California. After disrupting a plot by militants to sell weapons to American Nazis, Lewis developed allies in U.S. Naval Intelligence. Lewis’s agents uncovered another plot to seize west coast military armories as part of a planned fascist insurrection, Naval Intelligence shut it down. Lewis’s agents prevented assassinations of prominent Jewish citizens and supported prosecution of American Nazis in the 1930s and during WWII."

In popular culture Leon Lewis is featured in the 2022 podcast Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra for his heroic role in exposing the plot by the Silver Shirts 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, 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).