Letter: Crescenta Valley Park’s history is nothing to salute

It’s interesting to see how the Historical Society of Crescenta Valley has attempted to “clean up” the history of the Crescenta Valley Park by calling it a “gathering place for German Americans.”

Far from being a place of “cultural celebrations,” the former Hindenburg Park was Southern California’s center for Nazi “Brownshirt” marches and rallies in the 1930s and ‘40s. The largest took place April 30, 1939, when a brigade of 2,000 German-American Bund members came to hear West Coast Bund leader Herman Max Schwinn and “American Fuehrer” Fritz Kuhn.

The “latticed building” wasn’t a wine concession at all. It was a beer stand serving German beers to the Nazi participants. The octagonal concrete slab is all that’s left of the stand and will undoubtedly be soon removed by those who would try to suppress this reminder of Hindenburg Park’s sordid history.

Trent Sanders
La Cañada