Tseytin Shmuel (Bubi) (19.01.1921, Riga — 14.06.1990, Holon, Israel) — printer, dental technician, disabled veteran of the Second World War, Prisoner of Zion. His parents — Eliezer and Mina Tseytin — and sister Yokhana perished during the Holocaust. His brother Eli (b. 1922) was arrested in 1940 for Zionist activities and exiled to Siberia, where he soon died. Ts. studied at various Jewish schools in Riga. From 1933 he was an active member of the youth Zionist organization “Beitar.” After completing basic school he completed a Jewish vocational school, mastering the trade of printer. His grandfather in the late 19th century had founded the “Elias Levin” printing house in Old Riga. From 1937 Ts. worked as a lithographic worker. He fought in the 201st Latvian Division, and was severely wounded. He was treated at a hospital in Yaroslavl, from which he left in early 1944 to stay with his aunt in Moscow, working as a baker. In 1944, while hospitalized after a severe wound, he was arrested and sentenced for Zionist activities to 10 years in a corrective labor camp and three years of exile.
In exile in Karaganda he began mastering the trade of dental technician. He returned to Riga in 1956, and worked as a dental technician at the 9th Polyclinic until his departure for Israel. From the spring of 1962, when the site of the mass killings of Jews in Rumbula was discovered, all of Ts.'s public activities were directed toward perpetuating their memory and establishing a memorial cemetery. He was one of the initiators of the erection of a monument at Rumbula. On 15 September 1974 he emigrated with his family to Israel and settled in Holon. He immediately began working in the Ministry of Absorption, at its offices in Ashdod and Lod. In 1978 he was forced to stop working due to his health. He was an active and honorary member of the organization of Prisoners of Zion. Having retired, he devoted himself fully to gathering material for the book “Documentary History of the Jews of Riga.” This book contains substantial factual material from the period of the settlement of Jews in Riga in the 15th–16th centuries through the mid-1970s, primarily about the Zionist movement in Latvia. A large chapter in the book is devoted to the history of the creation of the memorial cemetery in Rumbula. The value of the book lies in its mention of numerous names of Latvian Jews and participants in the Zionist movement in prewar and postwar Riga, and its account of their activities and fate. Ts.'s widow Bella (née Fur, b. 22.03.1929) lives in Netanya.

Works: Documentary History of the Jews of Riga. Tel Aviv, 1989.

Lit.: Concise Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. Jerusalem, 1996. P. 257; www.soviet-jews-exodus; Koval L. Latvia—Israel. Crossroads of Fates. Subbota. Riga, 7 May 1994; Krasilshchikov A. Violet Flowers. Novosti Nedeli. Tel Aviv, 26 Dec. 2002; Sorkin Sh. We Will Remember His Name. Yevreysky Kamereton (suppl. to “Novosti Nedeli”). 20 Feb. 2003.


B. Valdman.