Haim (Efim) Yakovlevich Barsuk was born in 1902 in the Ukrainian city of Proskurov (now Khmelnytskyi), into the family of Yakov and Frada Barsuk. Yakov Haimovich Barsuk (born around 1870) worked as a weigher for local merchants. Haim was the second son in the family; he had three brothers: the eldest, Lazar, and two younger ones, Meir and Israel. Haim grew up a capable young man and enrolled in the local commercial school.

The atmosphere in the city encouraged entrepreneurship: before the outbreak of the First World War, Proskurov developed rapidly and became the largest trade center of the Podolia Governorate, largely due to the railway that passed through the city. The city played a particularly important role in grain exports. Proskurov’s commercial and credit institutions served a large region. About half of the population was Jewish.

The hardships of the Revolution and the Civil War drastically changed the fate of millions. In those turbulent years on the territory of the collapsed empire, antisemitism intensified. In 1919–1920, several waves of Jewish pogroms swept through Proskurov. The first of them, in January 1919, was caused by a false accusation that the so-called “apartment guard” (a Jewish self-defense body) had supported a Bolshevik uprising. The pogrom claimed 1,650 lives, and another 600 people were wounded. In February 1922, the Jewish Public Relief Committee (“Evobshchestkom”) prepared a report on the victims of the Jewish pogroms of 1919–1920, which, as its compilers acknowledged, was far from complete. According to the report, over those two years 1,425 Jewish families in Proskurov suffered from the pogroms to one degree or another, and the total material damage amounted to 8.7 million rubles.

Yakov Barsuk’s family survived the violence; however, during the pogrom of November 18, 1920, it sustained damage amounting to one thousand rubles. It is difficult to say exactly when Haim Barsuk became interested in Zionist ideas (possibly even during the tsarist period), but the Jewish pogroms of 1919–1920 undoubtedly contributed to their consolidation.

In the first years of Soviet rule, life in Proskurov seemed to be improving. Thanks to the New Economic Policy (NEP) and the economic activity of the Jewish population, the city’s economy gradually recovered. However, this growth did not last long: with the curtailment of the NEP, a significant number of artisans and merchants were placed in the disenfranchised category of “lishentsy” (persons deprived of civil rights).

In the political sphere, the Bolsheviks from the outset aimed to establish a one-party dictatorship; any other organizations were perceived as a threat, including Zionist ones. Participants in the Zionist movement were subjected to repression almost from the first months of Soviet rule. By 1923, only two Zionist organizations remained in the USSR that were permitted by the authorities: the Jewish Communist Workers’ Party “Poalei Zion” and the legal wing of the youth movement “HeHalutz,” whose supporters considered it possible for the Zionist movement to coexist with the Soviet regime.

The legal wing of “HeHalutz” operated in Proskurov and took part in establishing several enterprises, for example, a tobacco growers’ cooperative. Only a few years remained before the final prohibition of “HeHalutz.”

Some of the Zionists of Proskurov went underground. Among them was our hero. It was Haim Barsuk who headed the secret wing of the local “HeHalutz.” At that time, the young man worked as secretary of the domkombed—the house committee of the poor (a body of residential self-government). Haim Barsuk’s close associate was Iekhezkel Shaikin, an employee of the Proskurov procurement office. Both were later described by Chekist officials as “coming from a petty-bourgeois background.”

Documents of the GPU contain information about a certain “liquidation” operation against the “grouping” of Barsuk and Shaikin, carried out in December 1922. However, the Proskurov cell of “HeHalutz” at that time only temporarily suspended its activities, and by the summer of 1923 it resumed them.

Barsuk and Shaikin’s group consisted of seventeen members. It maintained contact with the Lviv organization of “HeHalutz” (which was located in Polish territory), receiving necessary information from it. The group collected funds for its activities through membership dues.

Meetings were held once or twice a month, at which reports were read on Jewish literature, the Zionist movement, and emigration to Palestine. Meetings of the leaders were held separately: for reasons of secrecy, they took place in boats on the Bug River, away from the city. The group did not recruit new members, as Barsuk and Shaikin feared Chekist agents.

Despite the efforts of Barsuk and Shaikin to observe secrecy, the Chekists nevertheless managed to infiltrate the group with an informant. However, no arrests or searches followed: the Chekists lacked sufficient information and evidence. It is possible that the investigators were waiting, hoping in time to reach “larger birds,” for example the leaders of the Lviv organization, through the heads of the Proskurov “HeHalutz.” It would also have been a clear success to catch someone in the act while attempting an illegal border crossing, but the Proskurov Zionists did not carry out such actions.

In 1923, however, Haim Barsuk was arrested. The Chekists still lacked evidence: no charges were brought, and Haim was soon released.

The following fifteen years of Haim Barsuk’s life are not reflected in documentary records, but they can be partially reconstructed from later sources. The leader of the secret wing of “HeHalutz” married Fania Marder. In 1928, their daughter Olya was born, and eight years later, Ira. Haim worked as a teacher at the Proskurov vocational school of the “Obllessoyuz.”

Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks’ anti-Zionist policy was becoming more severe. In late 1925 and early 1926, mass arrests of Zionists took place in connection with the authorities’ implementation of the Birobidzhan project—the creation of a fully controlled Jewish “autonomy” in the southern part of the Far Eastern Territory. In 1928, the last legal non-Bolshevik party in the USSR (not only Jewish, but any) — “Poalei Zion” — was dissolved. Shortly before that, “HeHalutz” had also been finally banned.

As history showed, this was only the beginning. By the 1930s, the Zionist movement in the USSR had been almost completely destroyed. However, many Zionists still remained at liberty, and “underground Zionist counterrevolutionary organizations” were now used by the Chekists to fabricate cases involving connections with foreign intelligence services, espionage, treason, and so on. The Great Terror of 1937–1938, the peak of Stalinist repressions, was unfolding. Our hero was caught in it.

On June 26, 1938, Haim Barsuk was arrested by the Proskurov city department of the NKVD. The Chekists also detained Iekhezkel Gorenstein, who worked as a planner at the Proskurov bread factory. The basis for the arrest of both men was the testimony of Iekhezkel Shaikin, already mentioned above; apparently, he did not withstand the pressure of the investigation.

According to Shaikin’s testimony, a cell operated in the city that was a branch of the all-Ukrainian center of “HeHalutz.” H. Barsuk was an emissary of its committee and was responsible for agitation; I. Gorenstein carried out operational work; and I. Shaikin was in charge of financial matters.

Between 1920 and 1924, the main goal of the organization was direct emigration to Palestine. Many members succeeded: Bleichman (it was he who in 1920 persuaded Shaikin to join the group) and his two brothers, Shpilberg, Weisman and his two sisters, Iekhezkel Gorenstein (who later returned to Proskurov), and the Schwartz family moved to Eretz Israel. Bleichman, Shpilberg, and Weisman formed the first committee of the group; after their departure, they were replaced by H. Barsuk, I. Gorenstein, and I. Shaikin.

From 1925, when exit visas from the USSR ceased to be issued, the group concentrated on agitation and the promotion of Zionist ideas. Funds for organizational expenses and assistance to those who had left for Palestine were raised through the cultivation of land plots and the sale of the harvest to members of the organization at low prices.