Background
She was the daughter of German-Jewish immigrants and an observant Jew who practiced kosher dietary laws.
She was the daughter of German-Jewish immigrants and an observant Jew who practiced kosher dietary laws.
Born in Illinois, Mendheim attended Washington Irving High School in New York City and completed New York Public Library training in 1918.
Her personal papers, including documentation of her spy activities, are housed in the archives of the Leo Baeck Institute in New New York She worked in various NYPL branch locations over the next twenty-five years, receiving both a bronze and a silver service medal in recognition of her years of employment. Correspondence from library administrators and supervisors indicate Mississippi
Mendheim had chronic health problems that led to her early retirement in the late 1940s, although little is known of her personal life.
She also served as secretary of the Committee for Arab-Jewish Understanding, an organization attempting to negotiate compromise regarding the situation in Palestine in the late 1930s and 1940s. Mendheim"s archives contain evidence of her literary aspirations as well, in the form of numerous manuscripts for articles, plays, poems, and stories.
Mendheim"s surveillance activities began in 1933 (or shortly after), with the establishment of the Nazi government in Germany and the formation of Nazi support organizations in New New York Her involvement was primarily with the group Friends of the New Germany and its successor organization the German American Bund.
Under the assumed identity Gertrude Mueller, Mendheim attended pro-Nazi meetings and rallies and eventually accumulated a sizable collection of anti-Semitic propaganda produced locally, nationally, and abroad.
According to archival documents, Mendheim"s purchases of Nazi propaganda and literature were reimbursed by Rabbi Jacob Xenab Cohen of the American Jewish Congress, to whom she submitted regular narrative reports of her activities.
This collaboration may have been part of the American Jewish Congress" efforts to monitor anti-Semitic violence and boycott Nazism in the United States. Mendheim"s undercover work appears to have ceased by 1939.