I am neither a scholar, nor an academic with those kinds of resources. I received help from a variety of sources (a Jewish librarian in Valencia, Spain tried to track down Spanish documents on soldiers who died at the battle of Belchite, another Jewish librarian at OSU found the microfilms of the Columbus Citizen).
Reading the Rotenstone book got me started. Rotenstone writes on page 208 about the successful battle of Belchite:
"These were costly maneuvers and among the men who fell dead in them were Henry Eaton and Samuel Levinger."As too often happens, my interest in Sam increased after the sources who could tell me about him were no longer available. Rotenstone also quotes a tiny bit of one of Sam's poems:The footnote (#21) at the end of the paragraph reads:
Book of the XVth Brigade, p. 265; Ernest Hemingway, "The Spanish War," Fact, No. 16 (July 15, 1938), 34.
Comrades, the battle is bloody and the war is long;
Still let us climb the gray hill and charge the guns,
Pressing with lean bayonets towards the slope beyond.
In March of 2001 I wrote to the Veterans of the American Lincoln Brigade Archives explaining my interest in Sam.
I contacted a couple of rabbi friends (one a pulpit rabbi in Columbus and the other an academic whose field is American Jewish history... who had written about the Jews of Columbus) who I hoped might be aware of some of the "local history" resources. The each pointed me in the right direction.
I learned from Jules J. Duga:
Now on to Sam Levinger. A little scouting showed me that Sam has been involved with the Spanish Civil War. There was an article written in Le Monde Diplomatique (The Diplomatic World) April 1997, Pages 26 et 27, entitled DES CRÉATEURS CONTRE LA BARBARIE, Les écrivains et la guerre d'Espagne [CREATORS AGAINST CRUELTY, Writers and the war of Spain] contains the following paragraph:
"Parmi les quelque trois mille Américains qui combattirent dans les Brigades internationales, il y eut aussi des écrivains très jeunes et remarquables. De ceux tués au combat, on ne peut oublier deux jeunes poètes : Sam Levinger, mort à Belchite, et Joseph Seligman, dans la bataille du Jarama. Ils avaient vingt ans."
This translates, more or less, to read: "Among the few three thousand Americans who fought in the international Brigades, there were also very young and remarkable writers. Those killed with the combat, one cannot forget two young poets: Sam Levinger, died at Belchite, and Joseph Seligman, in the battle of Jarama. They were twenty years old.
Eventually (by May of 2001), I was able to track down photocopies of the pages from the Columbus Citizen. Clarence (Skip) Rittenhouse of Columbus, Ohio sent me photocopies of the articles.
I spent much of the CCAR Convention in Monterey, CA, in June (or July?) of 2001, transcribing the articles.
These transcriptions remained (as simple text files) on my computer until...
In December of 2005 I heard from Josh Levinger who saw my correspondence with ALBA. He had prepared a page on his Web site regarding Sam. The contact from Josh finally pushed me to put this material online.