Hurley in Iron County, Wisconsin — The American Midwest (Great Lakes)

Leon Lawrence Lewis
⎯⎯⎯
The Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range

Photographed by Kristin Kolesar, August 23, 2025

1. Leon Lawrence Lewis / The Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range Marker

Inscription.

Leon Lawrence Lewis, also, The Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range. . Leon Lawrence Lewis 1888-1954 Lawyer, Activist, Spymaster. 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 world war one. 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 world war one 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 world war two., The Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range. 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.

Leon Lawrence Lewis
1888-1954
Lawyer, Activist, Spymaster 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 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.

The Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range 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

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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.

Topics and series. This historical marker is listed in these topic lists: Immigration • War, World II. In addition, it is included in the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. series list. A significant historical year for this entry is 1933.

Location. 46° 26.88′ N, 90° 10.985′ W. Marker is in Hurley, Wisconsin, in Iron County. It is at the intersection of Iron Street and 3rd Avenue South, on

Leon Lawrence Lewis side of marker image. Click for full size.

Photographed by Jerry Klinger, August 20, 2025

2. Leon Lawrence Lewis side of marker

the right when traveling east on Iron Street. Marker is sited on the front lawn of the Iron County Historical Museum. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: 303 Iron Street, Hurley WI 54534, United States of America. Touch for directions.

Regionally, this marker is in Wisconsin’s Copper Country

and on the North Shore. It is also in the American Midwest,

on the Great Lakes,

and in the Corn Belt.

Globally, it is in North America,

the Great North Woods,

the Western Hemisphere,

the Western World,

and the Anglosphere.

Historically, it finds itself in what was once the territory of the Mississippian Culture

and also the Northwest Territory.

Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within one mile of this marker, measured as the crow flies: Penokee Iron Range Trail – Historic Iron County Courthouse (here, next to this marker); Worldwide Daffodil Project (a few steps from this marker); This 5 ½ Foot Diameter Drill Core (about 700 feet away, measured in a direct line); Italians on the Gogebic Iron Range (approx. ¾ mile away in Michigan); Ironwood City Hall (approx. 0.8 miles away in Michigan); Miners Memorial Heritage Park (approx. one mile away in Michigan); Commemorating the Iron Ore Industry (approx. one mile away in Michigan); Hiawatha (approx. one mile away in Michigan). Touch for a list and map of all markers in Hurley.

More about this marker. The double-themed marker is an exceptional tribute to a largely unknown American Patriot, Leon Lewis, and the historical presence and contributions of the Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range in northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The Iron County Historical Society, with support from the City and Community of Hurley, sited the marker prominently on the grounds of the Historic Iron County Museum.

Regarding Leon Lawrence Lewis / The Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range.

The Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range side of marker image. Click for full size.

Photographed by Jerry Klinger, August 20, 2025

3. The Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range side of marker

In the 1930s and the 1940s, Lewis, as the Executive Secretary of the Anti-Defamation League and then independently, uncovered the Nazi plot to take over German-American organizations. The transformed organizations planned assassinations, bombings, and violent attacks on military armories for weapons as part of a larger effort to take over Southern California and eventually overthrow the American government. Lewis, with the help of patriotic German American veterans of WWI, created a network that spied on the American Nazi movement, the "Bund." The intelligence retrieved at great personal risk enabled the defeat of Nazi efforts, without a single bullet being fired. Leon Lewis was central to defeating the Nazis and saving America from potential chaos.

The Iron County Historical Society wanted to have a specific text to the Jewish community, and contributions of Jewish Americans to the life, culture, and society of the Gogebic Iron Range. Though there are no Jews in the Hurley community, and few in the Gogebic range, most having relocated to other parts of the United States, their story is considered very significant by the Hurley community.

Also see . . .
1. The Nazis’ Plan to Infiltrate Los Angeles And the Man Who Kept Them at Bay.

Lewis’s network of spies, many of whom were trusted by top Bund officials
Photographed by Jerry Klinger, August 20, 2025

4. Marker dedication ceremony
in L.A., reported on and worked to interrupt a wide range of haunting plots, including the lynching of film producers Louis B. Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn and star Charlie Chaplin. One called for using machine guns to kill residents of the Boyle Heights neighborhood (a predominantly Jewish area), and another conspired to create a fake fumigation company to surreptitiously kill Jewish families (a chilling precursor to the gas chambers of Nazi concentration camps). Lewis’s spies even uncovered plans to blow up a munitions plant in San Diego and to destroy several docks and warehouses along the coast.

(Submitted on August 22, 2025, by Jerry Klinger of Boynton Beach, Florida.)

2. Leon Lewis: The Nazi-fighting spymaster from a northern Wisconsin town.

The town of Hurley may seem an unlikely place for the birth of a spy ring, let alone one that would take on Nazis in America in the years before World War II. But it is the birthplace of Leon Lewis — a man who fought against the hate group’s activities, specifically thwarting a pre-war Nazi plot to infiltrate Hollywood.

“There was actually a plan to bring about an armed insurrection,” Lewis’ grandson, Tom Read, said of an even more dangerous plot that his forebear also defused. “The Nazis had detailed floor plans of U.S. military armories on the West Coast.”

(Submitted on August 22, 2025, by Jerry Klinger of Boynton Beach, Florida.)

Marker prior to dedication image. Click for full size.

Photographed by Jerry Klinger, August 20, 2025

5. Marker prior to dedication

3. Jewish Religious Life on the Iron Range.

Agudas Achim, the Hibbing synagogue where Bob (Dylan) Zimmerman had his bar mitzvah, closed in the mid-1980s. B'nai Abraham in Virginia was the last to close, in the mid-1990s.

(Submitted on August 26, 2025, by Jerry Klinger of Boynton Beach, Florida.)

4. Leon Lawrence Lewis – Lawyer, Activist, Jewish Spymaster.

On “Der Tag”, on “the (designated) day”, the Bund was going to unleash a violent revolution in California, much as Hitler had done in Germany. Lewis’s spies had discovered the Bund was planning to overthrow the American government.

Lewis took the information to the Los Angeles Police Chief, James Davis. Lewis explained that the Jews were only the appetizers for the Bund. The Police Chief was not interested. He was somewhat sympathetic to Bund. The Chief’s focus was not on a few crazy Germans. He was obsessed with stopping Communists.

(Submitted on August 30, 2025, by Jerry Klinger of Boynton Beach, Florida.)

Credits. This page was last revised on January 1, 2026. It was originally submitted on August 22, 2025. This page has been viewed 363 times since then and 81 times this year. Last updated on December 31, 2025, by Kristin Kolesar of Hurley, Wisconsin. Photos: 1. submitted on September 9, 2025, by Kristin Kolesar of Hurley, Wisconsin. 2. submitted on August 22, 2025, by Jerry Klinger of Boynton Beach, Florida. 3. submitted on August 25, 2025, by Jerry Klinger of Boynton Beach, Florida. 4, 5. submitted on August 22, 2025, by Jerry Klinger of Boynton Beach, Florida. • Devry Becker Jones was the editor who published this page.

Leon Lawrence Lewis⎯⎯⎯The Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range

Leon Lawrence Lewis
⎯⎯⎯
The Jewish Community of the Gogebic Range