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| Leon Lewis- Lawyer, Activist, Spy-Master |
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| Leon Lawrence Lewis
1888-1954
Lawyer, Activist, SpymasterLeon 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 annd 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.
Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range
(side 2)
German Jews were among the first merchants on the Gogebic Range in the mid-1880s. The community was welcoming, so Jewish settlers encouraged relatives to move to the booming iron mining towns. Caspar Lewis, father of Leon Lewis, joined his brother in Hurley in 1886 and opened a wholesale liquor and cigar store. The Lewis family resided on the corner of Third Avenue and Iron Street until 1897.
Jewish presence grew with the arrival of Lithuanian immigrants. The first synagogue was built in 1895 on Division Street in Hurley. Reverend Moses Rein was the longtime rabbi. The Sharey Zedek Synagogue was the center of Jewish community life until its closure in 1940. The Range was home to 500 Jewish residents in 1918. They enriched their communities, working as business owners, doctors, lawyers, and teachers. The Jewish community valued the importance of education, tolerance, and a strong work ethic, leaving a positive legacy on the Gogebic Range.
Erected 2025 by Iron County Historical Society, Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.
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