{"id":4194,"date":"2017-03-03T21:13:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T21:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/?p=4194"},"modified":"2025-11-05T19:42:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T19:42:22","slug":"from-the-philadelphia-jewish-archives-police-squad-thwarts-tolerance-raiders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/2017\/03\/03\/from-the-philadelphia-jewish-archives-police-squad-thwarts-tolerance-raiders\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Philadelphia Jewish Archives: Police Squad Thwarts Tolerance Raiders"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bureau of Police complaint report excerpt, March 16, 1939<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On March 14, 1939, Detective Sergeant Jacob H. Gomborow assigned six detectives from the Philadelphia Bureau of Police\u2019s radical squad to attend a meeting organized by the Committee for Racial and Religious Tolerance held at the West Philadelphia branch of the YMCA at 52nd and Sansom Streets. The committee was an interfaith group sponsored by well-known clergy and politicians including Daniel A. Poling, Rufus M. Jones, C. Davis Matt, and Francis J. Myers. Prior to the meeting, Gomborow had received information that a group of Nazis were planning to infiltrate the tolerance gathering and instructed detectives to sit in the audience to monitor the meeting for any disturbances. The detectives witnessed a number of persons heckling the speakers, making slanderous remarks against Jews, and nailing anti-Semitic literature and posters to the walls. One of those men, William J. Rigney, stood up repeatedly during the meeting, interrupting the speaker, proclaiming that \u201cHitler is right in what he is doing to the Jews\u201d and \u201cit is the Jews own fault.\u201d The meeting was abruptly adjourned as a result of the disorder caused by these men. As they left, the detectives observed these same men distributing leaflets promoting racial and religious hatred and pasting anti-Jewish stickers on cars and store windows in the surrounding neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cAttention, American Gentiles!\u201d flier issued by Thomas Blissard Sr., March 1939<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Detectives arrested eleven of the \u201cNazi strong armers\u201d who were subsequently charged with inciting a riot. In the early morning hours of March 15, three others were arrested at City Hall, including Thomas A. Blisard, Jr. and Joseph A. Gallagher, while they were attempting to secure the release of those arrested outside the tolerance meeting. Joseph A. Gallagher, chairman of the Anti-Communist Society of Philadelphia, a group founded by the West Philadelphia High School teacher and Nazi sympathizer Bessie \u201cTwo Gun\u201d Burchett, protested the arrests, claiming they were a \u201cframe-up.\u201d Gallagher also denied the literature found in his car, which included copies of the Father Charles E. Coughlin publication Social Justice,<\/em> was anti-Semitic propaganda. Thomas A. Blisard, Jr. (aka Blissard or Blizzard) and his family were well known in the community and to police as rabid anti-Communists and self-described Coughlinites. At the time, Blisard was chairman of the Philadelphia Committee for the Defense of Constitutional Rights, a group originally formed to protest against the radio station WDAS. The station had dropped Father Coughlin\u2019s broadcasts when he refused to provide advance scripts of his addresses. Blisard\u2019s father made use of tolerance meeting arrests to further their cause, printing and circulating fliers publicizing the \u201cpersecution of gentiles\u201d suffered at the hands of an \u201corganized gang of Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently prepared for research use, the Jacob H. Gomborow Papers, housed in Temple University Libraries\u2019 Special Collections Research Center<\/a>, document Gomborow\u2019s activities as an officer and detective in Philadelphia\u2019s Bureau of Police, responsible for leading the bureau\u2019s radical squad in their investigations of anti-Semitic, subversive, and radical groups in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. View the online finding aid <\/a>or catalog record<\/a> to learn more about the Jacob H. Gomborow Papers or to request access to the collection in the SCRC reading room on the ground floor of Paley Library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jessica M. Lydon, Associate Archivist, SCRC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On March 14, 1939, Detective Sergeant Jacob H. Gomborow assigned six detectives from the Philadelphia Bureau of Police\u2019s radical squad to attend a meeting organized by the Committee for Racial and Religious Tolerance held at the West Philadelphia branch of the YMCA at 52nd and Sansom Streets. The committee was an interfaith group sponsored by … Continue reading From the Philadelphia Jewish Archives: Police Squad Thwarts Tolerance Raiders<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":987,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[19,51,25,16,52,6],"class_list":["post-4194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-news","tag-american-jewish-history","tag-anti-semitism","tag-history-news","tag-philadelphia-history","tag-philadelphia-police","tag-top-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/987"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4194"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5474,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4194\/revisions\/5474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/historynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}