A brilliant young Jewish actress risks life and limb to infiltrate the German-American Bund in 1930’s New York. It’s “Chinatown” with Nazis as she joins forces with powerful rabbis and gangsters, navigating Yorkville’s maze of intrigue and violence, all in the hope of helping her family escape Nazi Germany. 

SYNOPSIS:

The year is 1933, and Nazism is gaining its hold over Germany. Florence Wagner, a young German-American Jew living with her extended family in Berlin, is attending university and studying to become an actress. After seeing a friend of hers nearly beaten to death, Florence begins to fear for her own safety and decides to return to New York to live with her widowed father and brother. She implores her extended family to follow her to America, but they refuse, believing the wave of anti-Semitism will simply pass.

Back in New York, Florence works in a bank as an executive secretary. While there, she overhears the board members making deals that will benefit the bank by funneling money to Hitler’s Nazi party. After attending a talk by the famous Rabbi J.X. Cohen on the rise of Nazism, Florence approaches him to get his opinion on how to help her family get out of Germany. While there, she mentions what she suspects is happening at the bank. To her surprise, the Rabbi knows all about it—and more.

Rabbi Cohen, quickly fixing on her pseudo-Aryan beauty and her facility with multiple languages, offers her a deal: She uses her skills in stage craft and her fluency in German to spy on the growing Nazi influence in Yorkville, the German enclave in Manhattan, and in return he will help get her family out of Berlin.

At first Florence is hesitant, but after witnessing the divisive effect this influence is having on her Yorkville neighborhood firsthand, she agrees. With the help of the Rabbi, she affects the alternate identity of Marie Schroeder and begins her infiltration by attending a Friends of New Germany (FONG) meeting. There she meets Heinz Spanknoble, the leader of the NYC group, Boris Brotta, a royal White Russian fascist, Franz Mittemier, a German bookstore owner, and a handful of others involved in the American Nazimovement. Mittemeier in particular takes an interest in her and, despite their suspicions, he convinces them to hire her as a volunteer secretary.

Florence’s involvement in the FONG quickly becomes more complicated than she anticipates. To effectively play the role of Marie she must not only somehow tolerate the overt passes these fascists keep making at her, but she must now also make peace with the fact that to prove her loyalty she must be complicit in the hate crimes they commit. Meanwhile, it’s more and more dangerous to be Jewish in both Germany and the US: Florence’s uncle in Berlin has been disappeared to a “work camp,” and there is a rash of anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York driven by encouragement from the FONG. In reaction to this, Spanknoble is put under criminal investigation for inspiring Nazi activity and must flee the country. His replacement is a man named Fritz Julius Kuhn.

Kuhn endeavors to put a more American spin on the FONG, renaming it the German-American Bund. This proves wildly successful. Under him, the Bund greatly expands its membership, influence, and liquid assets. After learning that Florence used to work in a bank, Kuhn puts her in charge of the Bunds bookkeeping, indirectly giving her even greater access to information she can slip to the Rabbi. Unfortunately, that’s not where Kuhn, an unrepentant womanizer, interests end; he makes several passes at Florence, which ultimately end up pushing her into the arms of Brotta, the Russian fascist.

Florence is in over her head: she’s sleeping with a Nazi, and every day it seems more likely playing Marie will get her hurt---or killed. Unbeknownst to Florence, Brotta murders a Bund member who is about to out her.

After being again sexually assaulted by Kuhn at work, Florence finds herself at her wits end. When her brother Arthur finds her crying on a park bench, she cracks and admits to being a spy.

With revenge on her mind and knowing the extent to which Kuhn has been freely spending the Bund’s money on his own grifting and womanizing, Florence cooks the books to frame him; thereby framing a guilty man. Growing ever more desperate, the Bund holds a “Pro American Rally” in Madison Square Garden as cover for a terrorist event. The Bund’s plan is to detonate a small bomb as Kuhn speaks and frame it as an act of Jewish defiance in order to further stir up anti-Semitism in New York. While at the event, Florence gets into a physical altercation with Brotta, who she’s noticed has been following her around the city. In the process of escaping him Brotta slips and is knocked unconscious next to the bomb hidden under a seat. Florence realizes the bomb is actually in a gift package she saw at Bund HQ and heroically snatches it up, sprints out of the Garden and places it in the safety of a mailbox on the street, where it goes off in a fiery explosion of mail, fluttering down, harmlessly hurting no one.

In the following weeks Kuhn is arrested and put on trial for the misuse of Bund money. Thanks to Florence’s evidence, the jury finds Kuhn guilty and he is sentenced to five years in prison.

During the trial Florence has been hiding out under her real identity. Brotta tracks her down in a park. Confronting her, he tells her that the Bund never really trusted her and reveals that he knows her real name. She flees. He violently restrains her. The police intervene. It is then that he reveals his true identity, a Jewish private investigator hired to spy on the Bund. She, an amateur, almost blew it for him. In a reverse Romeo & Juliet moment the two star-crossed lovers quarrel, each too proud to admit how they had each saved the others life. She accuses him of manipulating her. He points out the same. Just two actors playing a part. Florence storms off. He applauds her for a job well done, whispers, “Bravo”. Florence ultimately receives her just reward as the Rabbi supplies visas for Florence’s’ family. They board the MS St. Louis, the “Ship of the Damned.” Florence returns to pursue her career as an actress. Stage craft

YORKVILLE