Yedeikin (Jedeikin) Iosif (b. 1927, Riga) — Israeli public figure, educator, historian, former political prisoner.
Iosif Yedeikin spent his childhood and youth in Siberia. In 1941, the family of bicycle manufacturer Yakov Yedeikin (his wife Maria and twin sons Iosif and Leon) was deported from Riga to Siberia (Kargasok). In 1942, Yakov Yedeikin was executed by shooting for transferring funds from his own bicycle factory to the account of the Main Fund of the World Zionist Organisation (a letter of appreciation from its head, Chaim Weizmann, survives). One of the oldest Zionist activists in Latvia, Yakov Yedeikin was posthumously recognised as a Prisoner of Zion.
In March 1948, Iosif Yedeikin was arrested for participation in an international Zionist conspiracy. He spent five years in the GULAG, until 1953. After his release, he returned to Tomsk, where he studied at the Faculty of History and married (his wife’s name was Esfir). In 1957, he returned to Latvia.
In 1965, Yedeikin decided to emigrate to Israel and was dismissed from his university teaching post; he then worked as a schoolteacher. A second attempt to emigrate, in 1968, led to his dismissal from the schools. In 1971, he successfully emigrated to Israel.
In 1993, he was officially rehabilitated. He worked as a bank employee and was a member of the Central Committee of the Likud party. Fluent in several languages, he taught history at Bar-Ilan University.
Fifty years later, Yedeikin returned to Siberia. His journey through Siberia and reunion with the former commandant of the Special High-Security Regime Camp (OZERLAG), where he had been imprisoned (inmate number AЫ-155), was organised by the newspaper Haaretz.
Iosif Yedeikin was the chairman of the All-Israel Association of Prisoners of Zion. He resided in Tel Aviv, in a house on Ha-Gibor Ha-Almoni 48, Eliahu Street.
His daughter lives in Riga, whom he visited in 2006.
References:
Memorial Book of the Tomsk Region
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 10 October 2006 Translation from Hebrew by Mikhail Rudnev, TAYGA.info
http://tv2.tomsk.ru/subbota/news/2006/09/16/1158572937.html
http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/soviet_jews_exodus/POZ_s/POZ-49-1.shtml
Zion prisoners