Maizel Noah (1891-1952)

Maizel (Meisel) Noah (also spelled Noy Maisel) (1891–1952)

Noah Maizel was born on 5 January 1891 in the town of Nesvizh, Minsk Governorate. His father was Shaul, and his mother Kreina (née Auzenbut). From 1903 he studied at the Slutsk Gymnasium, which was closed in 1906 due to his participation in a political demonstration. In 1910 he passed his final examinations externally at the Bobruisk Gymnasium. In 1909 he moved to Liepāja.

From 1910 to 1914 he studied medicine at the University of Halle in Germany and at the University of Tartu (Dorpat), graduating in 1915. During the First World War he worked as a physician in refugee aid institutions on the Northwestern Front in Orsha and later as a Red Cross physician at the front.

In 1917 Noah Maizel joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), Menshevik faction. In 1918 he was elected to the Orsha City Council. In 1919 he was assigned to party work in Daugavpils.

During Soviet rule in Daugavpils in 1919, he worked as a physician for the Commission for Refugees and Prisoners of War, and from 1920 served as Daugavpils city sanitary physician. In July 1920 he was elected to the Daugavpils City Duma from the Jewish Social Democratic Workers’ organization Bund (he was chairman of the Daugavpils branch) and also served as deputy chairman of the City Duma.

He was a deputy to the 1st–3rd Latvian Saeima from the Bund list and served as a member of the Commission on Public Law and State Structure and the Commission on Education. In the 3rd Saeima he was also a member of the Commission for the Investigation of Deputies’ Affairs and the Commission of Interpellations. In 1926 he began studying law at the University of Latvia, graduating in 1933.

In 1922, 1925, 1928, and 1931 he was elected to the Daugavpils City Duma from the Bund organization. In 1931 he was a candidate in the elections to the 4th Saeima, but was not elected. From 1921 to 1934 he served as secretary and member of the Central Bureau of the Bund.

After the coup d’état of 15 May 1934, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Liepāja concentration camp. He was released on 29 March 1935 on the condition that he leave the country within two weeks (prior to this he had been held in the Liepāja prison). On 1 August 1935 this decision was revoked, and he was permitted to remain in Latvia.

Afterwards he worked until 1940 as an assistant in the Department of Nervous Diseases at the Jewish hospital “Bikur Holim” in Riga. From 1920 to 1940 he was active in the Jewish vocational assistance society ORT and in the Jewish socialist student organization “Cukunft” at the University of Latvia. From 1931 to 1938 he was a researcher at the YIVO Jewish Scientific Institute in Vilnius.

During the Soviet occupation, from 7 August 1940, he worked in Riga as an assistant to sworn attorney G. Hilman. In 1941 he served as senior inspector for municipal sanitation at the People’s Commissariat of Health. On 14 June 1941 he was arrested in Riga and deported to the Solikamsk labor camp. On 14 March 1942 he was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment.

In May 1951 he was released and exiled to a camp in the Novosibirsk Region, Severny District.

Noah Maizel died on 7 October 1952.