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‘Nazi Town, USA,’ a new PBS documentary, examines the 1930s heyday of Hitler’s acolytes in the US
(New York Jewish Week) — Picture a group of children having fun at summer camp, learning archery, swimming and playing tug of war, all while the Nazi flag flies next to the American flag. Or a packed crowd at Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, where men and women of all ages give the Hitler salute.
These are some of the real-life disturbing images depicted in “Nazi Town, USA,” a new documentary about the German American Bund — a pro-fascist, pro-Nazi organization that, at its peak, had some 100,000 members in the United States — that premieres on “American Experience” on PBS on Tuesday.
The German American Bund (bund is German for “organization”), founded by German immigrant Fritz Kuhn in Buffalo in 1936, was created to promote pro-Nazi ideology within the United States. Kuhn and his cronies relied upon patriotic imagery such as George Washington and the American flag to attract Americans of German descent as members — but as Kuhn himself said, the organization’s goals were to create a “socially just, white gentile-ruled United States” and a “gentile-controlled labor union free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination.”
Filmmaker Peter Yost, who wrote and directed “Nazi Town, USA,” told the New York Jewish Week that he first became interested in the history of Nazi organization while helping his friend Marshall Curry with his Academy Award-nominated short documentary “A Night at the Garden,” which used archival footage, some of which can also be seen in “Nazi Town, USA,” of the 1939 “Pro-American Rally” at Madison Square Garden held by the Bund.
“It’s amazing footage and it’s incredible that there are 20,000 of these Bund members inside Madison Square Garden,” Yost said. “It certainly begs the question, ‘If you can get 20,000 of them in this one spot, what the heck is going on in America at the time more broadly that enables that to happen?’”
That’s the central question Yost explores in “Nazi Town, USA.” Using archival footage and photos of the Bund’s activities — many of which were shot by the Bund itself for promotional purposes — as well as interviews with historians, the film chronicles the rise and fall of the organization from its beginning through its peak and its ultimate collapse in 1941.
The Bund was just one of hundreds of right-wing and fascist-friendly groups in the United States in the 1930s, but by focusing on one group, Yost was able to explore how and why fascism was so appealing to Americans at that time. “Often the best films, in my opinion, are ones that use a narrow story to tell a much bigger story,” he said. “While the Bund matters and is interesting, it really is a means to get at these bigger questions and explore these bigger ideas.”
Headquartered in New York City, the Bund was organized into 50 districts nationwide — indeed, the film’s name “Nazi Town, USA,” is meant to indicate that Nazi ideology, for a time, was widely embraced across the country.
“It resonated here for a reason,” Yost said. “It tapped into a lot of elements in America that were fascist-friendly, like the racist Jim Crow laws or very restrictive and race-based immigration laws. These were things that Hitler and the Nazis admired and even in some cases adopted for their Nuremberg race laws. They saw in many ways America as fertile ground for their ideas.”
A postcard depicting Camp Siegfried, a pro-Nazi summer camp in Yaphank, Long Island, in the 1930s. (Courtesy the Longwood Public Library’s Thomas R. Bayles Local History Room)
According to historian Bradley W. Hart, who appears in the film and is the author of “Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters,” certain “dark impulses” in American society come to the surface under the right circumstances — which is exactly what happened in the 1930s.
“This was a period of incredible turmoil in the U.S. You have the Great Depression, you have people who have lost everything,” he told New York Jewish Week. “At this moment, when you have dictators in Europe, people like Hitler and Mussolini, who are preaching hate and preaching that they have a solution to the real pain that people are feeling, it’s inevitable, unfortunately, that some will be attracted to that message.”
Enough people were interested in the Bund to make a business out of summer camps for families and children across the country, the most famous being Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, Long Island — a Suffolk County hamlet that also had a community called German Gardens with streets named after prominent Nazis.
“They had everything you would expect in a summer camp,” Hart said, emphasizing that many of the campers were city kids. “And this was a period when if you lived in the inner city, you didn’t necessarily have a car. You were looking for recreational activities for you and the kids. You were looking to get out of the city when there was no air conditioning.”
Reports from those camps are unsettling today precisely because of how relatable they are, he added.
“The accounts are anodyne-sounding in some ways: It’s a bunch of guys sitting around and drinking beers and the kids are playing and they’re talking politics,” Hart said. “It’s the kind of politics we find deeply appalling today, but the scene itself isn’t that different perhaps than what we might expect to go on in a camp — but then you have this deep ideological current of Nazism running underneath everything.”
At these camps, Nazi flags were flown on flagpoles and swastikas adorned the bungalows’ roofs. What’s more, according to Hart, the Bund didn’t conceal their antisemitism in part because they thought many Americans would agree with them.
“They couch it as anticommunism,” he said. “They’re open about the kind of antisemitism that they think is going to appeal to a broader swath of Americans.”
The strategy worked, for a while: When the FBI investigated the Bund because they were looking into Nazi activities in the United States, director J. Edgar Hoover wasn’t that interested in shutting down the organization because he was so anti-communist.
While it’s easy to draw parallels between the 1930s and today — the rise in antisemitism, the divisive American politics — such comparisons aren’t explicit in the film. But viewers can draw their own conclusions.
“It’s a film about fascism and non-democratic politics. It’s a film about a moment in America where a number of people wondered if the American experiment was failing,” Yost said. “We were looking at a specific moment in time, and exploring why these ideas captured the imaginations of some people at that time, and so it engages a number of big questions that in many cases we’re still asking today.”
The documentary also shows that many Americans were willing to stand up to Nazism and fascism, such as journalist Dorothy Thompson, who warned about Hitler in her articles and who was also at the Madison Square Garden rally, heckling. There was a group of tough Jews known as the Minutemen who would break up meetings of the Friends of New Germany, a precursor organization to the Bund, and the Chicago Daily Times reporters John and James Metcalfe went undercover and infiltrated the Bund so they could report on their plans.
Isadore Greenbaum, a 26-year-old Jewish plumber, risked his life to rush the stage at Madison Square Garden to yank the cables from Kuhn’s microphone. He was immediately beaten by the Bund’s security team, though the NYPD intervened and escorted him out.
“He really tries to strike the first blow against fascism in the United States — this is still years away from the U.S. fighting fascism in a physical way anywhere as a country,” Hart said.
As large as the Madison Square Garden rally was, the fighting there represented a turning point for the German American Bund.
“That’s an incredibly powerful moment … because it reveals what the Bund is,” Hart said. “When that violence erupts on the floor of Madison Square Garden — the most important, I would argue, political and social venue in the country in 1939 — people can’t turn away from that. It becomes clear that the Bund is not just a perhaps eccentric cultural organization that has some views that most people don’t agree with, it truly does have a violent undertone to it.”
The Bund collapsed shortly after the rally, when Kuhn was found guilty of embezzlement and tax evasion. Though its heyday is largely forgotten today, Yost hopes that this documentary will help serve as a reminder and a wakeup call about the precarious nature of democracy.
“It can be disturbing to see how deep the roots are for some of these ideas in America,” he said. “But it can be somewhat comforting to see that America has faced great challenges before, and has raised deep existential questions about our system of government, and has come out the other side.”
“Nazi Town, USA” premieres on “American Experience” on Tuesday at 9 p.m.
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Harvard Faculty Oppose Deal With Trump, Distancing From Hamas Apologists: Crimson Poll
Harvard University president Alan Garber attending the 373rd Commencement Exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 23, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
A recently published Harvard Crimson poll of over 1,400 Harvard faculty revealed sweeping opposition to interim university President Alan Garber’s efforts to strike a deal with the federal government to restore $3 billion in research grants and contracts it froze during the first 100 days of the second Trump administration.
In the survey, conducted from April 23 to May 12, 71 percent of arts and sciences faculty oppose negotiating a settlement with the administration, which may include concessions conservatives have long sought from elite higher education, such as meritocratic admissions, viewpoint diversity, and severe disciplinary sanctions imposed on students who stage unauthorized protests that disrupt academic life.
Additionally, 64 percent “strongly disagree” with shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, 73 percent oppose rejecting foreign applicants who hold anti-American beliefs which are “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence,” and 70 percent strongly disagree with revoking school recognition from pro-Hamas groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC).
“More than 98 percent of faculty who responded to the survey supported the university’s decision to sue the White House,” The Crimson reported. “The same percentage backed Harvard’s public rejection of the sweeping conditions that the administration set for maintaining the funds — terms that included external audits of Harvard’s hiring practices and the disciplining of student protesters.”
Alyza Lewin of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law told The Algemeiner that the poll results indicate that Harvard University will continue to struggle to address campus antisemitism on campus, as there is now data showing that its faculty reject the notion of excising intellectualized antisemitism from the university.
“If you, for example, have faculty teaching courses that are regularly denying that the Jews are a people and erasing the Jewish people’s history in the land of Israel, that’s going to undermine your efforts to address the antisemitism on your campus,” Lewin explained. “When Israel is being treated as the ‘collective Jew,’ when the conversation is not about Israel’s policies, when the criticism is not what the [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism] would call criticism of Israel similar to that against any other country, they have to understand that it is the demonization, delegitimization, and applying a double standard to Jews as individuals or to Israel.”
She added, “Faculty must recognize … the demonization, vilification, the shunning, and the marginalizing of Israelis, Jews, and Zionists, when it happens, as violations of the anti-discrimination policies they are legally and contractually obligated to observe.”
The Crimson survey results were published amid reports that Garber was working to reach a deal with the Trump administration that is palatable to all interested parties, including the university’s left-wing social milieu.
According to a June 26 report published by The Crimson, Garber held a phone call with major donors in which he “confirmed in response to a question from [Harvard Corporation Fellow David M. Rubenstein] that talks had resumed” but “declined to share specifics of how Harvard expected to settle with the White House.”
On June 30, the Trump administration issued Harvard a “notice of violation” of civil rights law following an investigation which examined how it responded to dozens of antisemitic incidents reported by Jewish students since the 2023-2024 academic year.
The correspondence, sent by the Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, charged that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a torrent of racist and antisemitic abuse following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre, which precipitated a surge in anti-Zionist activity on the campus, both in the classroom and out of it.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the four federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
The Trump administration ratcheted up pressure on Harvard again on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre.
Citing Harvard’s failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated other forms of hatred in the past, The US Department of Educationthe called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Balancing Act: Lebanese President Aoun Affirms Hope for Peace with Israel, Balks At Normalization
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun attends a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, March 28, 2025. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier/Pool
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Friday carefully affirmed his country’s desire for peace with Israel while cautioning that Beirut is not ready to normalize relations with its southern neighbor.
Aoun called for a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory, according to a statement from his office, while reaffirming his government’s efforts to uphold a state monopoly on arms amid mounting international pressure on the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah to disarm.
“The decision to restrict arms is final and there is no turning back on it,” Aoun said.
The Lebanese leader drew a clear distinction between pursuing peace and establishing formal normalization in his country’s relationship with the Jewish state.
“Peace is the lack of a state of war, and this is what matters to us in Lebanon at the moment,” Aoun said in a statement. “As for the issue of normalization, it is not currently part of Lebanese foreign policy.”
Aoun’s latest comments come after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar expressed interest last month in normalizing ties with Lebanon and Syria — an effort Jerusalem says cannot proceed until Hezbollah is fully disarmed.
Earlier this week, Aoun sent his government’s response to a US-backed disarmament proposal as Washington and Jerusalem increased pressure on Lebanon to neutralize the terror group.
While the details remain confidential, US Special Envoy Thomas Barrack said he was “unbelievably satisfied” with their response.
This latest proposal, presented to Lebanese officials during Barrack’s visit on June 19, calls for Hezbollah to be fully disarmed within four months in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from its five occupied posts in southern Lebanon.
However, Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem vowed in a televised speech to keep the group’s weapons, rejecting Washington’s disarmament proposal.
“How can you expect us not to stand firm while the Israeli enemy continues its aggression, continues to occupy the five points, and continues to enter our territories and kill?” said Qassem, who succeeded longtime terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah after Israel killed him last year.
“We will not be part of legitimizing the occupation in Lebanon and the region,” the terrorist leader continued. “We will not accept normalization [with Israel].”
Last fall, Israel decimated Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, following the group’s attacks on Jerusalem — which they claimed were a show of solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas amid the war in Gaza.
In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah.
Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.
However, Israel maintained troops at several posts in southern Lebanon beyond the ceasefire deadline, as its leaders aimed to reassure northern residents that it was safe to return home.
Jerusalem has continued carrying out strikes targeting remaining Hezbollah activity, with Israeli leaders accusing the group of maintaining combat infrastructure, including rocket launchers — calling this “blatant violations of understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
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Peace Meals: Chef José Andrés Says ‘Good People’ On Both Sides of Gaza Conflict Ill-Served By Leaders, Food Can Bridge Divide
Chef and head of World Central Kitchen Jose Andres attends the Milken Institute Global Conference 2025 in Beverly Hills, California, US, May 5, 2025. Photo: Reuters/Mike Blake.
Renowned Spanish chef and World Central Kitchen (WCK) founder José Andrés called the Oct. 7 attack “horrendous” in an interview Wednesday and shared his hopes for reconciliation between the “vast majority” on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide who are “good people that very often are not served well by their leaders”
WCK is a US-based, nonprofit organization that provides fresh meals to people in conflict zones around the world. The charity has been actively serving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel. Since the Hamas attack, WCK has served more than 133 million meals across Gaza, according to its website.
The restaurateur and humanitarian has been quoted saying in past interviews that “sometimes very big problems have very simple solutions.” On Wednesday’s episode of the Wall Street Journal podcast “Bold Names,” he was asked to elaborate on that thought. He responded by saying he believes good meals and good leaders can help resolve issues between Israelis and Palestinians, who, he believes, genuinely want to live harmoniously with each other.
“I had people in Gaza, mothers, women making bread,” he said. “Moments that you had of closeness they were telling you: ‘What Hamas did was wrong. I wouldn’t [want] anybody to do this to my children.’ And I had Israelis that even lost family members. They say, ‘I would love to go to Gaza to be next to the people to show them that we respect them …’ And this to me is very fascinating because it’s the reality.
“Maybe some people call me naive. [But] the vast majority of the people are good people that very often are not served well by their leaders. And the simple reality of recognizing that many truths can be true at the same time in the same phrase that what happened on October 7th was horrendous and was never supposed to happen. And that’s why World Central Kitchen was there next to the people in Israel feeding in the kibbutz from day one, and at the same time that I defended obviously the right of Israel to defend itself and to try to bring back the hostages. Equally, what is happening in Gaza is not supposed to be happening either.”
Andres noted that he supports Israel’s efforts to target Hamas terrorists but then seemingly accused Israel of “continuously” targeting children and civilians during its military operations against the terror group.
“We need leaders that believe in that, that believe in longer tables,” he concluded. “It’s so simple to invest in peace … It’s so simple to do good. It’s so simple to invest in a better tomorrow. Food is a solution to many of the issues we’re facing. Let’s hope that … one day in the Middle East it’ll be people just celebrating the cultures that sometimes if you look at what they eat, they seem all to eat exactly the same.”
In 2024, WCK fired at least 62 of its staff members in Gaza after Israel said they had ties to terrorist groups. In one case, Israel discovered that a WCK employee named Ahed Azmi Qdeih took part in the deadly Hamas rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Qdeih was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in November 2024.
In April 2024, the Israel Defense Forces received backlash for carrying out airstrikes on a WCK vehicle convoy which killed seven of the charity’s employees. Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said the airstrikes were “a mistake that followed a misidentification,” and Israel dismissed two senior officers as a result of the mishandled military operation.
The strikes “were not just some unfortunate mistake in the fog of war,” Andrés alleged.
“It was a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by” the Israeli military, he claimed in an op-ed published by Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. “It was also the direct result of [the Israeli] government’s policy to squeeze humanitarian aid to desperate levels.”
In a statement on X, Andres accused Israel of “indiscriminate killing,” saying the Jewish state “needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon.”
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