Zaidin Eliyahu (1916-1999)

Zaidin (Seidin) Eliyahu (1916, Riga - 1999, Jerusalem) - activist of the Zionist underground in the Soviet Union, prisoner of Zion.

Eliyahu Zaidin was born in the family of a member of the Zionist movement. He graduated from the Metukkan cheder (see Cheder) and Jewish school. During his school years he joined the ranks of the Ha-Shomer ha-tsa'ir movement. After Latvia's annexation to the Soviet Union he operated underground. At the beginning of the Soviet-German war he managed to evacuate from Riga to Ivanovo region, from where in August 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army and sent to the Latvian Division. From December 1941 he was at the front, took part in the Battle of Moscow. In 1942 he was demobilised after being seriously wounded.

At the beginning of 1945 Eliyahu Zaidin returned to Riga. Zaidin was one of the leaders of the underground organisation Briha in Latvia, thanks to whose activities hundreds of Latvian Jews were able to illegally cross the Soviet-Polish border and move to Eretz Israel. In June 1946, Zaidin was arrested by the Soviet state security authorities and sentenced to five years in prison in October. He was then transferred to Moscow, where a new investigation was launched, during which Zaydin was tortured. In February 1948, a special meeting sentenced Zaidin to eight years in prison and three years in exile. He served his imprisonment in Pecherlag in the Northern Urals, and exile in Salekhard in Western Siberia. In 1957 he was released.

In 1972 Eliyahu Zaidin repatriated to Israel with his family. He worked in the construction company Solel Boneh.