Local metropolitan dailies today carried editorials paying tribute to Sgt. Meyer Levin, reported killed in a bomber crash off New Guinea, pointing out that his name and that of Colin Kelley, with whom he made history when their plane sank the Japanese battleship Haruna, are linked as an example of the unity of the American people.
The New York Herald-Tribune writes that the fellowship of courage and achievement of Colin Kelley and Meyer Levin became a symbol of a people truly united. “Together these names rebuke the little sneers, the mean prejudices, the narrow fears that froth and bubble on the surface of the American melting pot,” the Tribune declares, urging that we “keep green the names of Capt. Colin Kelley and Sgt. Meyer Levin.” The Daily Mirror writes that Levin was “a hero of a whole cause. A symbol of that for which we fight. So very young, he was a veteran and a might warrior in the forces fighting for freedom and equality. How right he was and how right our battle – for, in an Axis land, he would have been herded and hounded in a ghetto, or condemned to death or slavery.”
The Amalgamated Clothing workers Union, of which Levin’s father, Sam, is a veteran member, has pledged to purchase, immediately, $350,000 worth of bonds to buy a bomber to be named after Levin. Additional sums for that purpose are to be raised by the people of Brooklyn, John Cashmere, Brooklyn Borough President, announced.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
