Marina Losev

Marina was born in Zaporizhzhia in 1962 and raised by a single mother, Ludmila, who worked to support her children as a manufacturing engineer in an aircraft engine factory. Alongside her second husband, Nikolai Nikitenko, Ludmila built a happy family, Nikolai adopting Marina as his daughter and supporting her in every way. The two also provided Marina with a brother – Michael.

Marina attended a regular school and was a good child and an outstanding student. She loved history and literature and studied music and piano for seven years. Besides the regular Russian holidays, Ludmila and Nikolai's home observed both Ludmila's Jewish holidays and Nikolai's Christian ones. Marina would say that her childhood was simple and happy in a family of industrial workers with organized work, a splendid education system, and a sense of calm and security. At university, Marina studied history and participated in archaeological excavations at ancient sites. She worked in research at the university where she studied and taught history at the local high school.

She met her husband Igor when still very young. Two years her junior, Igor was born on the banks of the Dnieper River, in the city of Zaporizhzhia – part of the former Soviet Union, now Ukraine. He was the son of Victor and Antonina, and a younger brother to Tatiana; he had severed ties with his father at a young age – his mother raising both children and working as a department manager in a large factory.

One day, after his release from the Soviet Navy but still in love with the sea and boats, Igor was paddling in a kayak on the river, when from afar, in a resort village, he saw a young woman in a red swimsuit, a bright spot on the horizon. He paddled towards her and asked, "Can you show me the way to the dining room?" Thus began the encounter with the woman who would one day become his wife, Marina.

Marina and Igor married in April 1988 in a small civil ceremony. Their only daughter Katya was born in January 1989. In the early 1990s, they experienced the turbulent and unstable days of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. When they heard about the Jewish Agency’s "First Home in the Homeland" program, they felt a desire to come and live in a kibbutz, in a secular, egalitarian, cooperative, and socialist society – an ideology they continued to believe in, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In October 1994, Marina and Igor emigrated to Israel with their five-year-old daughter Katya, leaving their families behind. They landed by night and were taken directly to a caravan waiting for them in Be'eri.

Together, Marina and Igor faced the separation from their homeland and the challenges of absorption in Israel and in the kibbutz. Besides studying Hebrew in the ulpan, they had to adapt to work on the collective farm. Marina worked for many years in the printing house, mainly in the greeting card department, and later moved to accounting management. She replaced Tzipi Zorea in managing the members' personal budgets.

Marina loved her work and the team she worked with. She knew everyone: the old members and the newest immigrants. She also volunteered for ten years in a second-hand store with Racheli Suiss. Her leisure hours were dedicated to reading. She loved British detective novels – Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie – reading them all in Russian. Marina also loved nature. She nurtured plants in her new home and devoted herself to her household cats and many street cats. She established feeding stations and served as a clinic cum veterinarian for injured or sick cats.

When they first arrived in the kibbutz, Igor worked at the dish-washing station in the dining room and then moved on to the printing house alongside Tzachi Gad. Later, he joined the digital department and other departments. In 2021, he was appointed as the safety supervisor in the print shop and maintained daily contact with all print shop departments regarding their personnel. In recent years, he developed a great curiosity, if not obsession, for exploring Russian digital archives that had been opened to the public. He researched his family's origins and compiled a large family tree with roots dating back to the early 19th century. Katya, their daughter, recalls: "Dad's computer was salvaged from the fire along with its entire archive of lives lived."

In 2018, Marina and Igor moved to their new home in the Kerem neighborhood. It was a cozy and orderly home, filled with Russian books and Katya's childhood and teenage collections. Igor planted fruit trees – mangoes and citrus. He measured the fruit yield each year and meticulously monitored the data. Katya recalls: "Mom was a very devoted mother. Very caring, sometimes overly so. I could share personal things with her. At every stage of my life, she helped me, and I could rely on her. She was friendly woman with a radiant face. No one escaped her discreet and devoted care. Everyone knew they could rely on her."

Anyone who knew Marina and met her would agree with Katya. Marina was a woman with eyes that shone, who only wanted to empower and help. In every role she took on, she radiated grace, out of her desire to respect every person, and from her endless love and dedication to the community.

"Dad was a refined and quiet man. He didn't like to be at the center of attention, but in the print shop, he made good friends throughout his years of work. He loved life on the kibbutz, yet he missed Russian culture. As a father, he was very sensitive and emotional, and it was easy to catch him with a tear in his eye." He and Katya loved to watch Russian-dubbed cartoons together and assemble furniture. He was the handy man who knew how to fix and install anything and immediately responded to any call for help from Katya.

She recounts that her parents made sure to teach her to read and write in Russian. They did it gracefully and without pressure, arousing her interest in the language and gently exposing her, through music and stories, to the Russian classics. They instilled in her the value of education so that when the time came, she would have the independent choice to pursue what she loves and to fulfill herself. In 2021, their granddaughter Kira was born, the daughter of Katya and Dima. Kira became the center of their world, and Katya occasionally had to remind them that she also exists, so they wouldn't forget her…

Ten days before the fateful Shabbat, they returned from a lovely vacation in St. Petersburg and brought Kira many Russian children's books that survived the fire. "It's a shame we didn't postpone this vacation until Sukkot," Katya said to herself many times since.

On the 7th of October, Katya was in touch with her parents until 10:00 in the morning. Marina managed to whisper on the phone that the terrorists were in the house. Katya waited and hoped they had only been injured. Two days later, the realization fell upon her, receiving confirmation a week later, that her parents were no longer among the living. "We were a small family and now we're even smaller. Now the kibbutz is my family, and Dima's, and Kira's. Nobody will ever understand me anywhere else."

Marina and Igor lived together for 35 years, almost 30 of which were in Be'eri. Their daughter Katya, her husband Dima, their granddaughter Kira, and the entire community of Be'eri, along with the kibbutz's cats and the mango and citrus trees, will continue to remember their love and their gentle touch.

May their memory be blessed.