On this day, 7 January 1994, lifelong Jewish revolutionary Leah Feldman was cremated in London after dying aged approximately 94. Born around 1899 in Warsaw, Poland, she devoted her life to the self-emancipation of the working class. Feldman moved to London where she worked in clothing sweatshops in the East End, and became active in the Yiddish-speaking anarchist movement.
With the outbreak of revolution in Russia she travelled there, then moved south and joined the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of the Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno, preparing clothes and food for war orphans. Later in life Feldman organised anarchist groups in Palestine, raised money for the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany, and supported anti-fascists in Spain during the civil war against the forces of general Francisco Franco.
Feldman began going blind, but continued her activism and in the 1960s smuggled weapons to anarchists in Spain who were continuing underground resistance to Franco. The Catalan anarchists nicknamed her “la yaya Makhnowista” (“the Makhnovist granny”).
Feldman remained as active as her health allowed until the end, after at least eight decades of revolutionary activism. See her short biography here: https://libcom.org/history/articles/1899-1993-leah-feldman https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1893363860848755/?type=3
