Nazis in Newark

After Hitler came to power in 1933, Nazis established organizations in major American cities to propagate their racial doctrines. Newark, New Jersey, with its considerable ethnic mix of Jews, Germans, Italians, Irish, and African Americans, was a primary target. Throughout the thirties and up to America's entrance into World War II, Newark's Nazis worked to convert the city's sizeable German-American population to their cause. Their efforts did not go unopposed.

Nazis in Newark is a comprehensive chronicle of local Jewish resistance, both organizational and private, and it also records the efforts of Newark's other ethnic groups to fight the Nazi presence that shook Newark during these years. At the center of Warren Grover's account is the story of two unlikely bedfellows: S. William Kalb, a physician who led the Newark Division of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, and Nat Arno, a prizefighter and gang member who led the Minutemen. Together they forged an alliance against Nazism, employing propaganda, public relations, and physical assaults. Among the extraordinary events that resulted were Jewish prizefighters who had protected Newark crime boss Longie Zwillman's bootleg whiskey shipments—turning their attention to stopping the Nazis after Prohibition ended in 1933.

Grover looks at the major ethnic components of Newark, analyzing alliances and conflicts as they reacted to the Nazi presence. He records battles between the German community's democratic and Nazi factions and conflicts between isolationists and interventionists. He describes the unsuccessful efforts of liberal Protestant leaders to convince their co-religionists to oppose Nazism and anti-Semitism, and analyzes, as well, the strained relations between the city's black and Jewish populations.

Grover uses archival information, contemporary newspaper accounts, and interviews to produce the first in-depth study of Nazism and the responses to it in an important American community during the crucial years of 1933-1941. Nazis in Newark is an colorful contribution to the history of the period preceding World War II.

Newark, New Jersey, a city of large Jewish and German populations, was the scene of Nazi recruitment and support activities by the Friends of the New Germany and its successor, the German American Bund, as well as the activities of opposing groups, the Minutemen and the Non- Sectarian Anti-Nazi League (NSANL). Grover (a founder of the Newark History Society) examines these activities in the period 1933-1941, describing the alliance between the frequently violent Jewish gangsters of the Minutemen and the aspiring middle-class actors of the NSANL. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Warren Grover, a Newark native, serves on the boards of the New Jersey Historical Society, the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. He is a founder of the Newark History Society.