Golda Meir

Golda Mabovitch was born in Kyiv on 3 May 1898 (21 April, Old Style) to the carpenter Moshe Mabovitch and Blume Neiditch. The family rented a modest home in a courtyard on Baseina Street, near the Bessarabsky Market, where her father set up his workshop. In her autobiography My Life she wrote that her earliest memory was of her father boarding up the door at rumours of a pogrom.

In 1903 her father left to look for work in America and the family moved to Pinsk; in 1906 they joined him in Milwaukee. Golda went on to become one of the founders of the State of Israel, signed its 1948 Declaration of Independence, served as labour and foreign minister and was prime minister from 1969 to 1974.

A memorial plaque with a bronze relief hangs on No. 5-a Baseina Street. Local researchers point out that the wooden courtyard house where the family actually lived has not survived, so the plaque marks the spot rather than the building itself. Kyiv’s Central State Historical Archive holds the register entry of her birth, and in 2024 a public garden on Borychiv Tik Street in Podil was named after her.