Kibbutz Givat Hashlosha near Petah Tikva is known for hosting many children from Europe who survived the Holocaust after World War II. However, few people know that among its founders were members of the Zionist-socialist movement from the USSR, who came to build a Jewish house after many years of prisons and exile.
One of them was Moses Weisbein. A native of Odessa, who went through the hardships of the Civil War, underground and exile, Weisbein dreamed of building a working Jewish state in Palestine. But when the party called out, he went to the USSR to restore the left-wing Zionist movement.
Moses didn’t return to the kibbutz. He fell for Zion during the years of Stalin's terror.
Moses was called Mikita by his friends. Lev Schneider from the Odessa branch of the Zionist Socialist Party (ZSP or ZS) once threw at Weisbein, who knew neither religion nor language: "Well, a regular Mikita!". The nickname stuck.
Weisbein came from an assimilated family. He was born on November 14, 1897 in Odessa, in the family of homeowner Hersh Davidovich Weisbein. Hersh raised his son in the Russian cultural tradition. But there was an underlying sense of national pride in Moses, awakened by numerous anti-semitic incidents during the First World War.
After the February Revolution, the Provisional Government began accepting Jews into the ranks of army officers. Weisbein decided to prove that Jews are excellent warriors. He graduated from the courses at the Odessa Military College. However, the war ended, the Bolsheviks came to power, and millions of Jews returned home.
So Mikita waited for the most significant day in his life. When the news of the publication of the Balfour Declaration reached Odessa, thousands of Jews took to the streets of the city, rejoicing. Among the demonstrators was a young ensign Weisbein. Moses was introduced to Zionism by Zionist Jews at an officer's school.
It soon became clear that the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd, which had stirred up the country, would lead to large-scale bloodshed. Moses set about creating the Jewish self-defense, which later saved many lives.
Weisbein could easily have joined the new masters of the country. He was sympathetic to the labor movement. But he dreamed of building socialism in Eretz Israel. And he actively joined the Zionist movement, joined the Tseyrei Zion party, and became a member of the department's secretariat. When the party broke up, he joined the — they were called the ZSP or ZS.
With his usual energy, he set about creating cells in Odessa and its surroundings. Mikita was introduced from Odessa to the Central Committee of the party, his name became known in party branches throughout Ukraine.
In the early 1920s, the persecution of the party as a whole and its individual members intensified. Mikita and his comrades decided to officially demand that the authorities recognize them as a legal party.
But the attempt failed, and the repression continued. The party went underground. Mikita was also arrested in February 1923. He was sentenced to be deported abroad. Before receiving a visa, he served exile in the Vologda province. After finally leaving the country, Mikita actively joined the work as a member of the secretariat of the World Bureau of the Zionist Socialist Party and a member of the delegation of the Central Committee of the USSR. Together with Israel Idelson, Mikita created the secretariat of the World Bureau of the Zionist Socialist Party in Danzig. Then he moved to Berlin.
But Mikita didn’t plan to linger. In March 1925, he found himself in Eretz Israel.
He joined the Maavar labor collective and mastered the language. And soon became an important figure in the Palestinian labor movement. He was elected treasurer of Maawar and a member of the board of kibbutz Givat Hashlosh, created jointly with other work collectives.
Meanwhile, the ranks of the ZSP in the USSR were thinning: emigration, arrests, deportations... The representatives of the party in Palestine decided to send their emissary to the USSR.
The first attempt, made by Mikita's close friend, Moses Lehtman, ended in failure. The choice fell on Mikita. By that time, the foreign delegation hadn’t had contact with the Central Bureau of the Central Committee in the USSR for six months.
Mikita was traveling as a representative of the World Organization “Zeirei Zion – ZSP" — the governing body of the movement, which by that time had merged with the world organization "Poalei Zion", where David Ben-Gurion played the main role.
Mikita was taking a roundabout route again. In Basel, Switzerland, he actively participated in the World Zionist Congress. In Danzig, at the Gehalutz World conference... In Berlin, Mikita was waiting for the long–awaited news: money arrived, a letter came confirming the possibility of entering the USSR through Latvia.
In November 1927, Mikita crossed the border and boarded a train to Odessa.
At a meeting with the Odessa asset, Mikita revealed his cards: he arrived in the USSR to restore movement. Weissbein said that "at the top" it was decided to create a new Central Committee under his leadership. To do this, Weisbein planned to organize the escape from exile of a number of prominent party figures. The money will come from Riga.
The comrades corrected Mikita's decent documents, he registered in Odessa. But the precautions didn't work. OGPU agents were infiltrated into the Zionist movement. It seems that the emissary of the Weltferband World Zionist Association began to be monitored back in Petah Tikva.
On December 3, 1928, Moses Weisbein went to Kyiv. He noticed a tail at the train station. He got to Moscow in a roundabout way. He managed to tell two underground Zionists about the situation in Palestine. And on January 3, 1929, he was arrested.
This time, the Soviet authorities tried him on articles of espionage and smuggling. During three years in the infamous Solovetsky special purpose camp, he contracted tuberculosis. After the camp, they appointed a link — Yeniseisk, then Minusinsk.
In January 1934, the term of exile expired, and Mikita went to Kherson — Sonya Rolnik lived there. Mikita met a native of Nikolaev, also exiled as a ZSP activist, in Yeniseisk. The young people were considered a couple, although they did not register a marriage.
After serving her exile, Sonya settled in Kherson and rented a room for Mikita in a neighboring house. They have been trying to get a residence permit for eight months. Completely desperate, they parted again: Sonya went to Dnepropetrovsk, Moses — to Kremenchuk. But they continued to work together in the Zionist movement.
Mikita and Yakov Vigderzon, the brother of another prominent Zionist, Avraham Vigderzon, one of the leading figures of Zionism-Socialism in the USSR, developed an up-to-date program of the ZSP. Sonya was instructed to distribute a ready-made party program.
And on the night of September 12, 1937, a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Moses Weisbein, was arrested again. Soon Mikita's case was transferred to Kharkov: he was connected with the defendants in the agent case "Nonresidents", initiated by the Kharkov division. Zionists Aizik Elkanovich, Isai Zelner and Veniamin Pekh were also involved in the case.
According to the orientations, Mikita and the mentioned Zionists were visited by Shabtai Volodarsky and Mendel Beilin from Kursk, who intended to revive the Zionist party underground in the country. However, the arrested denied having any organizational connection with each other.
Meanwhile, Weisbein's health, transferred to Kyiv's Lukyanovo prison, was rapidly deteriorating. On March 26, 1938, the sanitary department of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR decided to allow the prisoner to lie down during the day and prescribed him enhanced nutrition.
At the same time, Mikita's testimony suddenly changes. On March 31, 1938, he admitted that in May 1937 he received the Weltferband directive. The Allied United Central Committee of the Zionists, created by Mikita and his associates, was allegedly ordered to intensify anti–Soviet work — to commit terrorist attacks, to convene united Zionist congresses in the regions. The interrogation protocol is clearly falsified.
On April 19, 1938, forty-year-old Moses Weisbein died in a prison hospital.
Most of the arrested comrades of Moses also did not come out of Stalin's dungeons. However, his beloved and colleague, Sonya Rolnik, managed to survive and, although already at an advanced age, finally found freedom in the land of Israel.
Many of those with whom Mikita began to build a Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine became famous at home. Israel Idelson took over the post of Minister of the Interior. Misha Lehtman headed the Histadrut in Tel Aviv and became one of the founders of the city of Holon. Mikita's Odessa colleague, Emanuel Harushi (Novogrebelsky), is known as a songwriter. The names of his comrades are immortalized in the names of the streets of Israel. Maybe there will be a street named after Mikita?
Moses Weisbein
1987 – 1938
