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In Memoriam

Isaac Milstein

1890 – 1942

JDC Representative, Romania

Isaac Milstein was the JDC representative in Romania with responsibility for the Balkan countries. He was arrested in 1940 by the NKVD after the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia (formerly part of Romania). He was charged with being “a socially dangerous element.” Milstein was sentenced to eight years in corrective labor camps. He died in 1942 at the Ivdellag camp in the Sverdlovsk region (Soviet Union). He was “rehabilitated” (his name was officially cleared) in 1989.

Extended Profile

Isaac Abramovich Milstein, born in 1890 in Orgeev, Bessarabia gubernia(today Moldova) and a resident of Kishinev, was the JDC representative in Romania, with responsibility for the Balkan countries. At the end of June 1940, Bessarabia (part of Romania), including the city of Kishinev, was annexed by the Soviet Union. Shortly afterwards, on July 9, Milstein was arrested by the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) and charged with being “a socially dangerous element.” On November 2, 1940, he was sentenced to eight years in corrective labor camps by the Special Council of the NKVD. He died on April 13, 1942, in the Ivdellag camp in the Sverdlovsk region in the Soviet Union. Milstein was “rehabilitated” (his name was officially cleared) on January 16, 1989, by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Isaac Milstein with his wife and two sons

Sources

Archive of SIB RM (Information and Security Service of the Republic of Moldova).

Mitsel, Mikhail. “The Final Chapter: Agro-Joint Workers – Victims of the Great Terror in the USSR, 1937-1940.” Eastern European Jewish Affairs, Vol. 39, No. 1, April 2009.