Leon Josephson
[3][4][5][6] Leon Josephson was born into a Jewish family in 1898, in either Goldingen[1] or Libau[2] in Latvia, Russian Empire.
In 1929, he served on the defense team (along with Arthur Garfield Hays of the Sacco and Vanzetti case and Dr. John Randolph Neal of the Scopes Trial) for union organizers in Loray Mill strike in Gastonia, North Carolina charged with conspiracy in the strike-related killing of a police chief.
Co-defendant Fred Beal was later to charge that Josephson's defense strategy of sticking to the facts (a sequence of events in which strikers were attacked and a labor protester was shot and killed) and of not playing into the prosecution's attempt to place the defendants' communist beliefs on trial was deliberately sabotaged by the party intent on creating further martyrs.
[3][6][7][9][10][11][12] Beal, then in Soviet exile, in later testimony to House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC, 1947) claimed that he had met Josephson several times in Moscow and that he knew him to be an "GPU agent".
"[15][16] In 1932, he was "involved in providing support for the Russian illegal (either Comintern or Military Intelligence) LYND, then visiting India.
"[15] On August 31, 1934 (according to the 1947 HUAC report – see below), Josephson signed his name "Bernard A. Hirschfield," witnessed by Harry Kwiet (with whom he had associated in 1929 during the Gastonia trial), on a passport application for one "Samuel Liptzen" with a photo of Gerhart Eisler (identified in 1946 by former Communist and Daily Worker editor Louis F. Budenz as a "mastermind" Soviet spy).
[6] By 1935, Josephson was reporting to Alexander Ulanovsky, recently rezident or Soviet station chief in New York and whose network members included Whittaker Chambers).
Ulanovsky had resurfaced in Copenhagen to head Soviet espionage ring that collected military information on Nazi Germany.
The Danish police arrested Ulanovsky and two Americans, Leon Josephson and George Mink, following a search of their hotel room which turned up codes, money, and multiple passports.
Ulanovsky claimed they were Jewish anti-fascists acting on their own, but the police produced information, possibly obtained from the Gestapo, that proved they were working for Soviet intelligence.
The Danes held a secret trial and convicted Ulanovsky of spying and sentenced him to eighteen months in prison.
Later, State Department handwriting experts determined that the signature for another of the four passports ("Al Gottlieb") was Josephson's.
[17] In December 1938, Leon borrowed $6,000 so his brother Barney could open Café Society in a basement room on Sheridan Square, West Village, New York City.
[4][5] Barney Josephson later said: I wanted a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together out front ...
Segregation in the States was relentless: as Josephson told Reuters in 1984, "The only way they'd let Duke Ellington's mother in was if she was playing in the band.
On February 18, 1947, freshman U.S. Representative Richard M. Nixon mentioned Josephson's name often in his maiden speech to Congress: Mr. Speaker, on February 6, when the Committee on Un-American Activities opened its session at 10 o'clock, it had by previous investigation, tied together the loose end of one chapter of a foreign-directed conspiracy whose aim and purpose was to undermine and destroy the government of the United States.
First came the real Samuel Liptzen, accompanied by labor lawyer Edward Kuntz as counsel: both were sworn in.
He claimed he had been unable to appear on February 6, 1947, as required by subpoena because of the illness of "the missus with whom I have the rooms," named Mrs. Annie Halland (Holland).
Liptzen also denied ever "loaning" anyone his naturalization papers or knowing Josephson or Eisler (including any of his aliases or codenames).
Kuntz described building occupants at 35 East 12th Street in New York City: CPUSA national committee on top ninth floor, Daily Worker editorial offices on eighth, F. & D. Printing Co. on seventh, Morning Freiheit sixth, CPUSA state on fifth, Daily Worker business offices on second, and F. & D. Printing Co. presses in the basement.
HUAC member U.S. Rep. Bonner resumed questioning of Kuntz to ask him more about the Freiheit and the owners of the building and corporation therein.
Vail and Stripling resumed questioning of Kuntz, who admitted that for some years up to the early 1940s he had headed the staff of International Labor Defense (which had a peak of 250–300 volunteer labor lawyers) and was chairman of the legal committee when ILD dissolved but denied knowing Josephson there.
Kuntz, who denied knowing Eisler but admitted he knew Josephson because "I used to be a habitue of Cafe Society."
Their joint testimony ended with HUAC's informing Liptzen that he remained under subpoena and was "not excused" but rather subject to recall.
HUAC investigator (and former FBI agent) Louis J. Russell provided an overview of his life, from birth in Latvia, espionage in the States and Denmark with George Mink during the 1930s, and efforts to make the false application for Gerhart Eisler's passport in 1934.
Russell noted that penniless brother Barney Josephson had made trips to Europe in the mid-1930s before opening Café Society in 1938.
Russell then presented 1938 Dies Committee testimony from John P. Frey, former president of the metal trades department of the AFL that claimed that Mink had been involved in the Soviet assassination of Leon Trotsky and proceeded to insert four pages of transcripts into the record that included 1938 testimony by Earl Browder, Benjamin Gitlow, and Jay Lovestone among others, all about Mink.
HUAC chief investigator Robert E. Stripling concluded "Mr. Eisler and Mr. Josephson ... are in the higher echelons of the Communist International."
"[3] Shortly after his HUAC testimony, Josephson publicly avowed membership in the Communist Party USA in the influential leftist journal, the New Masses.
