Taubin Dov (Dow, also Boris) (5 April 1920, Riga — 26 January 2007, Israel) — chemist, violinist.
Dov Taubin was born into a family that observed Jewish traditions. His father, Moshe Taubin (1886–1942), was co-owner of a knitwear factory and owner of the MT company, a supplier of tea to Riga. His mother was Noelia Taubina (née Nikomarova) (1886).
Until 1933, he studied at a German school, then at a Hebrew gymnasium, where Hebrew and Tanakh were taught by Gordin. During his studies, he became involved in Zionist activity and in 1937 joined the Betar movement. He graduated in 1938 and planned to study at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, but these plans were disrupted by the incorporation of Latvia into the Soviet Union.
He enrolled in the Faculty of Chemistry at the Latvian University and simultaneously studied violin at the conservatory. On 14 June 1941, his family was deported to Siberia. He initially lived with his mother in a kolkhoz in the Krasnoyarsk region near Kansk. He served in construction units in Krasnoyarsk, later working in a construction organization under the Ministry of Construction, where from 1946 he headed a department.
In 1947, he entered the Leningrad Correspondence Industrial Institute (chemical-construction faculty), graduating in 1955. In 1951, he moved with his family to Kansk, where he worked as an engineer at a hydrolysis plant and for about three years also performed as a violinist in the orchestra of the Kansk Drama Theatre.
In 1957, Dov Taubin returned to Riga. From 1957, he worked as a senior engineer at the Research Institute of Wood Chemistry, and in 1960 became head of a group at the institute “Latgiproprom.”
In 1971, he emigrated with his family to Israel. After several months in Nazareth Illit, the family moved to Beersheba, where he worked as an engineer at the company “Makhteshim” until his retirement in 1985. That same year, the family moved to Kfar Saba.
He delivered lectures on the struggle of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel and on the Zionist movement in Latvia. He was the author of the memoir “30 Years Too Late” (in Hebrew, Tel Aviv, 1983), in which he emphasized the role of Zionist upbringing in his family, the Hebrew gymnasium, and Betar. His memoir is particularly valuable for its detailed description of the life of deported Latvian Jews in Siberia and for its account of the revival of the Zionist movement in Latvia in the 1960s–1970s.
He was married to Riva Taubina (née Fogelman). Their children were Moisei (b. 1952) and Liya (b. 1956).
His brother, Lazar Taubin (1912–1954), emigrated to Israel in 1938 with his wife and two daughters.