Feigin, Mark

Son of Berta and Joseph, was born in 1904 in the town of Berdyansk in southeastern Russia (in the Tauria or Crimea region). He was educated in a Zionist atmosphere in his parents’ home and grew up as a free and upright citizen, because the few Jews who were allowed to live there during the Czarist period on the basis of special rights were accepted by the local Russian society as respected citizens. His Zionism stemmed, therefore, from an aspiration to the noble man who was revealed all his life with noble generosity in his contact with people. After the Communist revolution, he joined the Zionist Youth Organization, which studied “the member” and held responsible positions in it. He continued to work in the organization while he was a student at the University of Moscow from 1921 onwards and later in the underground movement united Zionist youth. In 1926 he was arrested for his Zionism and deported to Siberia, and after a few months his sentence was commuted to leave Russia permanently and in September / October 1926 he came to Israel and studied at the Technion in Haifa until becoming an engineer. He married an old Spanish family in Jerusalem, worked for several years as a manager of the potash plant in the northern Dead Sea and in the organization of work from its inception in the plant in Sodom. After that he worked for a while in the Jerusalem Electric Company and in recent years, in the service of the water company in Pardes Hannah and Tel Aviv. Immediately after his arrival in Israel he joined the Haganah. In the 1929 riots he was one of the defenders of Haifa and during the bloody riots of 1936-1939 he served as a commander in the defense of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. On February 14, 1948, when he was on a trip to Haifa from Afula, he was murdered by Arabs near Kiryat Haroshet, and was brought to an eternal rest in the military cemetery. He left behind a wife, Rachel, who enlisted immediately after his fall, to replace him, and fell during her service about a year after his death.