Meyer Levin Dead at 75

Meyer Levin, who for more than 50 years recorded Jewish life in the United States and Israel and who for the last 25 years of his life contended that he was the first to conceive of a stage adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” died of a stroke last Thursday night at Hadassah Hospital. He was 75 years old. Funeral services were held here today.

Levin, who began writing for The Chicago Daily News in 1922 while attending the University of Chicago, was a prolific writer of novels, plays, documentary films and scenarios. He was a passionate defender of Jewish settlement in Palestine and the State of Israel. During the last years of his life, he was an outspoken advocate for the immediate settlement of all Ethiopian Jews (Falashas) in Israel.

His works about Jewish life in Palestine and in Israel began with his first novel in 1931, “Yehuda,” about kibbutz life. It was based on his own experience working in Palestine on a kibbutz near Haifa in the late 1920s. Subsequent novels about Israel included “The Settlers” and “The Harvest.” After World War II he filmed the smuggling operation of Jews from Poland across Europe to the Palestinian coast and the documentary he produced was called “The Illegals.”

Levin’s books dealing with life in the United States included “The Old Bunch” (1937), “Citizens” (1940) and “Compulsion” (1956) which became a highly successful play and film. In 1955 he instituted a suit against Anne Frank’s father and the producers of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” He sought more than $1 million in damages, claiming that he had first conceived of the idea for the play and that his version had been rejected because it was “too Jewish.” Levin contended that the version which appeared on Broadway was watered down, with the stress on a universal theme. Levin, who was born in Chicago, first visited Palestine in 1925 to cover the opening of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and returned in 1928 to work on the kibbutz. In the early 1920s he traveled

to Paris and was introduced to Hasidic literature, which was to become a life-long interest. He translated Yiddish tales into English and traveled to Eastern Europe. In 1958 he took up part-time residence in Israel, and divided his time between homes in New York City and Jerusalem.

As a reporter, Levin covered the Spanish Civil War and the Arab riots against the Jewish yishuv in Palestine. From 1930 to 1932 he wrote for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and from 1944 to 1946 he was a war correspondent for the Overseas News Agency which was at the time a subsidiary of the JTA.

Shortly before his death he completed a novel, “The Architect,” about the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. It is to be published this fall by Simon and Schuster. Levin was the recipient recently of the Jewish Academy of Arts and Scieences first annual Joseph Handleman Prize in the Arts. He was a founding member of the Committee for Historical Truth. In 1950 he wrote his autobiography, “The Search,” and created a series of nonfiction books called “The Jewish Heritage.”