Torgoff, Leonard Sloan, 1916-1937

Leonard Sloan Torgoff was born in 1916. While attending Brooklyn College as an English major, Torgoff organized workers and led a successful strike against Feltman's Restaurant and hotdog stands in Coney Island, for whom he worked. When his mother died in January 1934, Torgoff took a leave of absence from school. Making his living as a plumber, he committed himself to becoming a writer and began to practice his craft. After a hitchhiking trip in Canada, Torgoff enrolled in night school at City College back in New York. In the summer of 1934 he left home again, this time traveling cross-country to Arizona, ending up enrolled in college at University of Denver in Colorado for the school year 1934-1935. There he wrote "Moods and Muses," subtitled "a literary column," for the college newspaper, The Clarion, in which he reviewed art, plays, jazz, food, poetry and books, and offered observations on beauty, love and war, among other topics. During this time Torgoff also continued writing poems, essays and short stories. Torgoff grew homesick for New York, however, and returned home after a year in Colorado.

In January 1937, Torgoff sailed to Spain on the S.S. Champlain to join the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. He was assigned to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and in February 1937 was in one of two trucks that were attacked as they drove into the fascist lines during the Battle of Jarama. Reports initially listed Torgoff as having been taken prisoner and executed, but subsequently it was established that he was killed in the course of the ambush.

Torgoff went by the nickname Leo or Leon; Sloan was his mother's maiden name.

From the guide to the Leonard Sloan Torgoff Papers, 1928-1936, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)