Margolina (née Westerman; first marriage Sibzener) Dina Preidelevna (18 August 1910, Jaunjelgava, Jēkabpils District) — accountant.

In 1914, after the outbreak of the First World War, Dina Margolina’s family moved to Riga; the family home and property were destroyed by fire in Jaunjelgava (Friedrichstadt). She completed seven years of primary school and was compelled to begin working as early as 1925. Subsequently, she obtained a secondary education by graduating from an evening school in Riga.

Until 1933, she lived in Riga and worked at private enterprises: at the Mushat firm as an accountant and bookkeeper, and as a bookkeeper at the Livshits canteen. In 1933, she married Polish citizen Gustav Sibzener (1909, Rava-Ruska, Poland — fate unknown), moved with him to Warsaw, and acquired Polish citizenship. She did not work, being dependent on her husband. The spouses began living separately in 1937, although no formal divorce was registered. Two children were born in the marriage. Owing to severe financial hardship and marital discord, her husband sent her to Rava-Ruska (Poland) to live with his stepmother. After returning to Latvia in 1938, she had no reliable information about her former husband; according to acquaintances, he was killed in one of the Polish concentration camps.

At the end of the 1930s, Dina Margolina returned to Latvia with her children and lived with relatives. She changed several jobs with private employers and, after the establishment of Soviet rule, worked as a building manager. On 27 June 1941, she was at work and was unable either to see or to save her children, parents, and sisters, who were murdered by the German occupiers. She was evacuated to the town of Khalturin in Kirov Region and until 1944 worked first at a local school and later at Evacuation Hospital No. 3160.

In 1944, she returned to Latvia and lived and worked in Riga: as a clerk at Spetstorg and as manager of a buffet on the Riga Railway. In 1948, she worked as an accountant-cashier at the Spartaks garment factory in Riga.

In 1948, Dina Margolina received Soviet citizenship. In 1949, she registered a second marriage with a Riga resident named Margolin (dates of birth and death unknown). In 1957, having been widowed, she submitted a petition for repatriation to Poland and in 1958 received permission to leave Latvia.

Her father’s brother, Abe Westerman, lived and worked in the United States (New York) in the 1940s.

Family:

Abe Westerman (Jaunjelgava — dates unknown) — uncle
Gustav Sibzener (1909, Rava-Ruska, Poland — fate unknown) — first husband