Veitser (Weitzer) Izrail Yakovlevich (7 May 1889, Druya, Vilna Governorate – 7 May 1938, Moscow) — People's Commissar for Internal Trade of the USSR.
In approximately 1900, Izrail Veitser sought admission to the Realschule in Druya but was rejected due to the Jewish quota. Member of the Bund from 1906. In 1907, he passed the full Realschule curriculum with distinction and enrolled in the Faculty of Law at Kazan University. In 1912, he was arrested and expelled from the city but nonetheless completed two faculties at Kazan University.
From 1914, he was a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) and was active in revolutionary work in Dvinsk and Vilnius. In 1916, he enrolled at the Polytechnic Institute in Saint Petersburg, Faculty of Physics and Mathematics.
In 1918, he worked as an accountant at the Moscow branch of the People's Bank. In 1919, he served as an inspector for the finance department of Novozybkov Uyezd, Bryansk Governorate; chairman of the provincial economic council and of the provincial consumer union in the Chernigov Governorate (?). From March 1920, he was chairman of the provincial executive committee in Vyatka. In May 1921, he was appointed plenipotentiary of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee for the collection of the food tax in Penza.
From 1922, he was chairman of the provincial economic council of the Tula Governorate (?), and First (Executive) Secretary of the Provincial Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). In 1924, he became a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Trade of the USSR in Moscow. In 1927, he joined the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Internal and Foreign Trade of the USSR and headed the Grain and Forage Administration.
In 1929, Izrail Veitser became People's Commissar for Trade in Kyiv. From 1930, he was Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Trade of the USSR and, from 1931, served as Trade Representative in Germany (succeeding I. E. Lyubimov). On 29 July 1934, he was appointed People's Commissar for Internal Trade of the USSR.
In 1936, he married Natalya Ilyinichna Sats. On 17 October 1937, he was dismissed from his post. That same year, at an open Party meeting of the Commissariat for Internal Trade, he was publicly denounced for having married a woman who had already been arrested as an “enemy of the people.”
He was arrested on 3 November 1937 at his residence in Apartment 159, 2 Serafimovich Street, Moscow (the so-called “House on the Embankment”). During his first interrogation, he signed all the charges against him without reading them. He was executed on 7 May 1938.