Golda Meir, one of the world’s most prominent women in the 20th century, got her start in Kyiv in the late 19th century. Fortunately, in the 21st century, her image remains on a building today in the neighborhood where Meir was born 112 years ago.
Meir’s destitute childhood in Kyiv helped shaped the destiny of Israel, the post-World War II creation, especially after she rose to become prime minister in 1969. The first woman to become prime minister of Israel stayed in the office until 1974. But she blazed trails throughout her life, serving as the first Israeli ambassador to the Soviet Union from the nation’s inception in 1948 before leaving the post in 1949.
Had fate gone a different way Meir could have been Ukraine’s Iron Lady. But the Jewish pogroms in 1903-05 forced her family to flee Kyiv and the czarist Russian Empire. They sought shelter in the United States.
But Ukrainians haven’t forgotten this native daughter. A memorial plaque to her remains on 5 Baseyna Street in the Pechersk neighborhood, near her birthplace.
Monument near the childhood home of Golda Meir at 5 Baseyna Street in Kyiv. (Yaroslav Debelyi)
WHAT
The bas-relief sculpture of Meir was erected in 1998, 20 years after her death at the age of 80. However, baby Golda did not spend the first years of her life in the big solid brick house on 5 Baseyna Street, where she is memorialized. She spent it in a modest, two-storied wooden house in the courtyard on 5A Baseyna Street. At the time, it was part of the heart of Jewish community settlements in Kyiv, but it no longer exists today.
In her best-selling 1975 autobiography called “My Life,” Meir described her childhood as “lacking in everything” from food to heat to clothes. Her father, carpenter Moshe Mabovitch, boarded up the front door in an attempt to defend the family from Jewish pogroms being carried out in the Russian Empire at that time.
In 1903, the Mabovitch family left their Kyiv house and moved to Pinsk, Belarus, to join other relatives in escaping pogroms. Finally, in 1906, her father found a job in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and helped the family emigrate. Years later, Meir recalled that her childhood full of anti-Semitic terrors strongly influenced her drive to establish Israel as a safe, secure Jewish state, whose founding also came on the heels of the Holocaust and World War II.
WHO
Golda Meir, born Mabovitch (1898 –1978), is still known as “a grey-bunned grandmother of the Jewish people” and one of the earliest women to serve as a prime minister. She was the seventh child in the Mabovitch family and had 2 sisters, while 5 more siblings died in early childhood.
At 14, Meir was supposed to get married to a 30-year-old insurance agent, a marriage arranged by her parents. She rebelled and moved to Denver, Colorado, to live with her sister. There she met her future husband, sign painter Morris Meyerson, whom she married in 1917. She modified her name to more Hebrew-sounding ‘Meir’ in 1956.
She was a teacher and an active member of Zionist movement, supporting the re-establishment of a homeland for Jewish people in modern-day Israel. In 1921, she persuaded her husband to leave for Palestine and take an active part in the creation of a Jewish homeland.
After Israel’s independence was achieved in 1948, Meir became the first Israeli Ambassador to the Soviet Union. She served other high government posts. Her nation-building challenges included finding housing and employment for Jewish immigrants and fighting wars with her Arab neighbors.
In 1956, then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion named Meir “the best man” in his cabinet. In 1969, at the age of 70, Meir was elected prime minister. In 1973, Meir found Western help for Israel in repelling Arab attacks from Egypt and Syria, known as the “Yom Kippur War,” which ended in a ceasefire after less than a month of fighting. After the war, Meir resigned.
She died of lymphatic cancer at the age of 80 in 1978. She was buried on Dec. 12, 1978, in Jerusalem on Mount Herzl, named after the founder of modern political Zionism.
She will not be forgotten anytime soon, if ever. A monument and square are named after her in New York City. The Center for Political Leadership in Denver carries her name, as does a school and a library in Milwaukee, a boulevard in Jerusalem and the Center for the Performing Arts in Tel Aviv. Meir’s face is on Israeli 10-shekel note.
She authored three books, including “This is Our Strength” (1962), “My Father’s House” (1972) and “My Life” (1975).
Meir’s amazing life story is the subject of plays and movies, including: William Gibson’s Broadway plays “Golda” (1977) and “Golda’s Balcony” (2003), Alan Gibson’s movie “A Woman Called Golda” (1982), movie “Sword of Gideon” (1986), Steven Spielberg’s movie “Munich” (2005), Tovah Feldshuh’s “O Jerusalem” (2006) and Marta Meszaros’ Hungarian historical drama “The Hope” (2009).
More information about Meir in English can be found on the Israeli prime minister’s official website www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Government/Memorial/PrimeMinisters/Golda.htm, as well as in the Encyclopedia of World Biography at www.notablebiographies.com/Ma-Mo/Meir-Golda.html. The Russian translation of her book is available online for free at http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/MEADEAST/meir.txt.
Kyiv Post staff writer Iryna Prymachyk can be reached at [email protected].
