Daring Duo Fought Nazism on Home Front

They were ordinary women--mother and daughter--whose devotion to tolerance and abhorrence of fascism launched them on an extraordinary adventure: the infiltration of prewar Los Angeles’ Nazi movement.

Before America’s involvement in World War II, Navy widow Grace Comfort and her daughter, Sylvia, a single secretary--both Gentiles--joined a group of Jewish private citizens in Los Angeles to investigate the activities of Nazi-inspired groups in the area.

The duo infiltrated fascist organizations, taking pictures at rallies, marches and demonstrations. They socialized with and gained the confidence of high-ranking officials of the pro-Nazi German American Bund and eventually shared their information with the FBI, naval intelligence and other law enforcement agencies.

The Bund, a national organization, arose in Los Angeles in the 1930s about the time Adolf Hitler gained power. Under the leadership of the Hitler-appointed American Fuehrer, Fritz Kuhn, propaganda was distributed throughout the nation from the Deutsches Haus, or German House, the Bund’s Western headquarters in the 600 block of West 15th Street.

The group tried to organize boycotts of Jewish-run businesses, especially the movie industry. It also spread slander about teachers and others who supported American entry into the war. Ultimately, the Bund hoped to purge the United States of Jews, minorities, Communists and anyone who did not share its notion of Aryan supremacy.

“Buy Gentile. Employ Gentile. Vote Gentile. Boycott the movies. Hollywood is the Sodom and Gomorrah where Jewry controls vice, dope and gambling,” proclaimed Bund handbills.

In 1933, when two Bund sympathizers working for the Los Angeles Times inserted anti-Semitic pamphlets into the newspapers, a Los Angeles man took the lead in launching an investigation that would expose white supremacy groups, help arouse the local Jewish community to the seriousness of the Third Reich’s threat, and ultimately lead to the founding of the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation Council.

Committee founder Leon Lewis--an attorney and disabled American veteran who was gassed during World War II--along with fellow lawyer Mendel Silberberg and director Joseph Roos, set up an elite spy network of a dozen courageous whistle-blowers, mostly non-Jewish volunteers.

The committee paid their expenses, offered them loans and helped them find jobs within the German American Bund, Ku Klux Klan and the fascist Silver Shirts. One informer was so trusted by the fringe groups that he was made chief of intelligence for the California KKK.

Pro-Nazi Rally Draws 2,000 in La Crescenta

On April 20, 1935, a group of jittery but dedicated Nazis celebrated Hitler’s birthday at the German House, hosted by Herman Max Schwinn, the West Coast Bund leader.

A brigade of 2,000 Bund members showed up at Hindenburg Park (now part of Crescenta Valley Park) in La Crescenta four years later to hear Schwinn and the American Fuehrer speak.

Clad in his gray and black storm trooper uniform, flanked by a dozen uniformed guards standing on a stage draped in red banners with swastikas, Kuhn spoke to a crowd that booed as a low-flying plane bombarded them with thousands of anti-Hitler tracts. The handbills read: “Wanted for kidnapping, Adolf Hitler. . . . Indicted by world opinion for murder and kidnapping with intent to kill.”

(Shortly after that rally, Kuhn was convicted of forgery and embezzling Bund funds. He spent almost four years in prison before being deported back to Germany, where he died in 1953.)

The Jewish committee recruited the Comfort “spy team” in 1940, and the women penetrated the Bund’s inner sanctum by gaining the confidence of high-ranking officials over a period of four years.

Sylvia began working undercover as a temporary stenographer, attending meetings with her mother and socializing with group members.

Sylvia sought out William Pierce Williams, a North Hollywood High School math and science teacher who had written a vicious anti-Semitic pamphlet, “Do You Know . . .”

Claiming to admire his work, Grace and Sylvia led Williams to believe they supported his views. Through Williams they worked their way into the Nazi movement.

(In 1948, three years after the war ended, Williams shot his wife, Hannah, while she was sleeping, then turned the gun on himself. His neatly written suicide note read: “Collapsed nerves. Returning to the Creator.”)

The Comforts’ deception was so successful that they served on several groups’ executive committees, checking IDs at the door and tapping into private conversations, in which they learned of hate crimes.

At a pro-Hitler fund-raising event, Sylvia hit it off with speaker Laura Ingalls, an outspoken aviator and isolationist who happened to share a name with the famous author and had recently flown over the White House dropping antiwar literature.

Sylvia accepted Ingalls’ invitation to fly to Germany with her. But before they could get off the ground, Ingalls was arrested and sent to jail for failing to register as a Nazi.

As the movie industry began churning out 120 anti-Nazi movies, the Comforts were attending screenings of Nazi propaganda films held by Franz K. Ferenz, known as the “brains of the Friends of Progress.”

Heading up the pro-Nazi film effort, Ferenz leased several theaters around Los Angeles, including the Mason Opera House. But it didn’t take long before the German film “Dr. Koch” was barred from the theaters by a judge. An angry Ferenz sued the theater owners but lost.

Undeterred, he continued to fan the flames of Nazism by holding a mock impeachment trial of President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the German House in 1941. Ferenz also owned the Continental Bookstore, where he sold Nazi propaganda and conducted German language classes. Adding to his income, he gave art lessons at the old Italian Hall on Main Street.

Efforts Lead to Conviction of 9 Los Angeles Nazis

Not until Pearl Harbor did the FBI begin to investigate seriously the people and organizations affiliated with the Bund.

Standing in line at a post office, Sylvia was arrested by FBI agents and interrogated about writing hostile letters to the president. Stepping in, the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Council turned over a cache of anti-Semitic literature, photos and reports she had amassed exposing many of the Nazi leaders.

In 1942, the Comforts’ undercover work resulted in the indictment and conviction of nine Los Angeles Nazis, including Ferenz, for violating the wartime sedition statute.

Details of the Comforts’ “spy reports” were dug up by amateur sleuth Melonie Pinneau, an undergraduate at Cal State Northridge, where thousands of documents relating to the committee’s activities are housed at the library’s Urban Archives Center.

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Rasmussen’s new book, “L.A. Unconventional,” a collection of stories about Los Angeles’ unique and offbeat characters, is available at most bookstores or can be ordered by calling (800) 246-4042. The special price of $30.95 includes shipping and sales tax.