Anatoly Rubin

Anatoly Rubin was born in 1927 in Minsk

Rubin was born in Minsk in 1927 to a traditional Jewish family, the youngest of 4 children. His father, Pinchas, worked for an organization that helped orphans. As a boy he was drawn more to Russian role models than Jewish ones.

After the German invasion in 1941, his family was forced into the Minsk Ghetto, and his father was murdered while searching for them. In November 1941 his mother and sister Betty were shot, while he and his sister Tamara escaped the march to the killing pits. He later left the ghetto with false papers and lived in a village as a non-Jew, doing farm work.

The Red Army reached his village in 1944, and he returned to Minsk to find that no member of his immediate family was alive. He was turned away from the army as underage and enrolled in a trade school for tank repair. He also boxed and studied at night.

In 1946 he was arrested on his return from an athletic event in Moscow, and a military court sentenced him to 5 years in a labor camp for Zionist views. He spent 6 years in Siberian camps in total and was later investigated by the KGB.

He immigrated to Israel in 1969 and campaigned for government help to Soviet Jews who wished to emigrate. He published memoirs, and the author Galila Ron-Feder Amit wrote a book about him. He died in 2017.