Samuel Levinger, 20-year-old graduate of University High School and former Ohio State University student, who left his home in January to enlist with the International Brigade in Spain, "to give the Fascists what they've asked for," is dead in Spain according to word received today by his parents, Rabbi and Mrs. Lee J. Levinger, 2257 Indianola-av.
The telegram was received from the New York headquarters of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of which the youthful labor student was a member.
The notification contained no other information, Rabbi Levinger said.
Mr. Levinger's parents had been worried about him recently when they learned through a friend of their son that an injury which he described as a "sun-stroke" was in reality a slight brain concussion.
A letter received last week from the young man who a year ago marched on the picket line in New York during the seamen's strike described an additional "nice safe little wound."
In an encounter at Belchite, in which the Lincoln Battalion served as shock troops for the Spanish Loyalists, he was hit in both legs, he wrote.
"But I'll be rested in a month," he added, "and my Commander Amrle says I've done my share at the front. Do you advise that I come home or stay and take a truck driver's job?"
The same letter made mention of "an extremely sentimental not to be delivered in case of death."
Explaining that he had lost this note, Mr. Levinger wrote, "If anything philosophical turns up deploring my death please think nothing of it."
Mr. Levinger dropped out of Ohio State University to enlist in Spain.
"Before he left us," Mrs. Levinger said today, "he told us that he had a feeling he was needed as a worker and because he felt the cause of Spain was the cause of America.
"His last words to us were: 'The Fascists wanted to get and we're going to give it to them.'"
Mr. Levinger was a brilliant youth. At the age of 14 he became interested in the labor movement in America. That same year he was arrested by a Cambridge, O., sheriff for attempting to take pictures of a labor disturbance in Cambridge.
He had little interest for baseball and football as a boy. He was inclined to read much and take long hikes in the country with his dog. He read profusely of economics and sociology.
Following his graduation from University High School he worked as a sailor for one year, making trips to Europe and along the Atlantic Coast.
Four other Columbus men are serving with the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Spain. They are: Wade Ellis, 1355 1/2 W. Broad -st; Fred Borer, Bernard Rucker, 1617 Harvard-av. and Ed Johnson, The latter two are Negroes.
While recovering from his "sun stroke" in a Madrid hospital, Mr. Levinger, printing with a pencil on small paper, sent a series of stories to his mother describing his experiences and observations.
Mrs. Levinger has worked arduously transcribing these notes and arrangements were completed only last Friday for their publication in The Citizen. His story of what he saw and did in Spain begins in The Citizen today.
In them he describes how he mingled, on Spanish soil, with Loyalist sympathizers from other countries .
He describes his meeting English seamen, Glasgow textile workers, Irish veterans of the Black and Tan wars, Germans escaped from concentration camps, anti-Fascist Italians, Poles, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Ethiopians and Americans representing almost every large trade union.
He tells of curing a heavy cold with hot goat's milk; of hearing Spanish children sing the same picket-line songs he had sung in America; of smoking cigarets [sic]. which he calls "pillow slips: Two grains of dynamite and one of strychnine."
He tells how the spirited enthusiasm and courage of the Americans in battle has made them appear "loco" to the Spaniards; he describes his two-week training period; airplane attacks, long crowded truck rides, his rations, equipment and the spirit of the Loyalist fighters.