Slivkina (Sliwkina) (née Kagan) Ella Isaevna (28 November 1926, Daugavpils) — educator, publisher, editor.
Ella Slivkina was born into the family of an import-export company owner. In 1938, she moved with her family to Riga, where from 1938 to 1940 she studied at the private Jewish gymnasium “Ezra,” with instruction in Hebrew and German.
During the Stalinist deportations of June 1941, members of her family were arrested and deported from Latvia as a “politically and socially dangerous element.” Her father was imprisoned in the Solikamsk labor camp (Ural region) and later in a camp in the Tayshet area (Irkutsk region). Slivkina and other family members were exiled to the settlement of Novo-Yugino (Tomsk region), where they worked on a collective farm.
In 1945, she moved to Tomsk, and in 1946, without official permission, returned to Riga, where she completed secondary school. In 1948, she entered the University of Latvia, studying in the Romance and Germanic departments of the Faculty of Philology.
In 1950, she was expelled from the university due to the second deportation of her husband, and she joined him in Bogotol (Krasnoyarsk region). In 1951, at the demand of the Tomsk special commandant’s office, the family moved to Tomsk, where her parents resided. There she continued her studies at the Faculty of Philology of the Tomsk Pedagogical Institute, graduating in 1957.
From 1957 to 1963, she taught English at a secondary school and later at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute. In 1963, she returned to Riga, where she worked at a secondary evening school.
In 1966, Ella Slivkinae repatriated to Israel and settled in Jerusalem, where she began working at the Institute for Scientific Translations. After its merger with the publishing house “Keter,” she continued working in publishing.
She was one of the initiators of the publication of the Short Jewish Encyclopedia (Kratkaya Evreyskaya Entsiklopediya, KEE) in Russian. From 1972 to 2002, she served as head of the editorial board of the KEE, and from 1976 to 1986, she also headed the publishing house “Biblioteka-Aliya” under the Association for Research on Jewish Communities.
She exercised practical leadership over the entire process of creating the encyclopedia. By the publication of the second volume in 1982, she had assembled a team of highly qualified editors, enabling the production of a work meeting the standards of modern Jewish studies and publishing. Thanks to her persistence and energy, the original concept was significantly expanded, and the KEE remains the only comprehensive Russian-language reference work covering all aspects of Jewish civilization and Jewish contributions to world culture.
In 2003, in recognition of her achievements, the American Biographical Institute named her Woman of the Year and awarded her the American Medal of Honor.
She participated in numerous conferences, including the Riga conference “Jews in a Changing World.” She is also the co-author (with L. Yuniverg) of the book “Anna Wildikan and Albert Schweitzer: On the History of Their Collaboration and Longstanding Friendship” (forthcoming).
Selected works
• The Short Jewish Encyclopedia — the largest Russian-language Jewish publication of the 20th century // Jews in a Changing World: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference, Riga, 1996
• Famous Jews from the Baltic States — Builders of the State of Israel // Jews in a Changing World: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference, Riga, 2000
• Anna Wildikan and Her Role in Albert Schweitzer’s Unique Project // Jews in a Changing World: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference, Riga, 2005 (with L. Yuniverg)