Lifșiț Haia

About

Haia Lifșiț was a communist activist of Jewish origin, born in Chișinău in 1903, into a family of low-ranking civil servants. She graduated from the Second Professional School for Jewish Women in Chișinău, and then continued her studies at a private high school in the city, where she developed her intellectual interests and concern for the social issues of the time. From a young age, she worked to support herself, working as a tutor and, according to some sources, also as a teacher, experiences that brought her closer to the world of youth and labor. After Bessarabia was occupied by Romania in 1918, Haia Lifșiț became involved in the youth revolutionary movement and became one of the active figures of the communist underground in Chișinău. Between 1924 and 1925, she was the secretary of the clandestine city committee of the Komsomol in Chișinău, and in 1925, she was part of the Chișinău Committee of the Communist Party of Romania. Later, between 1926 and 1928, she was the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol in Romania and collaborated on party propaganda, including the publication "Tânărul Leninist" (The Young Leninist), in the context of a period of intense political repression of communist organizations. In 1928, she was arrested and tried in the famous "Trial of the 114," held in Cluj, and was sentenced to eight years in prison and ten years of civil rights deprivation. While in detention, she participated in the political prisoners' hunger strike, a protest that lasted 49 days and severely affected her health; Haia Lifșiț died of exhaustion in 1929, at only 26 years old. Her life remained associated with the fate of women active in the social and political movements of the time, in a space marked by national tensions, repression, and ideological radicalization.