Leah Feldman

Leah Feldman (Yiddish: לאה פֿעלדמאן; September 1898 – 3 January 1993), also known as Leah Downes, was an Odesa-born anarchist garment worker who for most of her adult life was based in London, England. Feldman was active in the anarchist movement for almost 80 years, and towards the end of her life she acted as a last living link in the British anarchist movement to the Russian revolution, the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, and the pre-WWI Jewish anarchist movement in the East End of London.

Biography Feldman was born to a Yiddish-speaking Jewish family in Odesa in September 1898. In 1913 Feldman moved to England with some relatives, against her mother's wishes, where she began work as a furrier and first encountered the anarchist movement. She took part in the Yiddish language trade unionism that was active in East London. She continued to work as a garment worker but found the anarchist movement in London depressing and in retreat.

Feldman was, alongside Lilian Wolfe, a regular street seller of the anarchist newspaper Freedom for many decades. She was active in campaigns relating to the Angry Brigade, the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, Anarchist Black Cross campaigns for anarchist dissidents in Francoist Spain, and the anti-nuclear marches of the 1960s.

Feldman was registered blind after her eyesight was damaged in a bomb blast, which had been worsened by an accident in surgery. In her seventies she travelled to Warsaw to try and trace her relatives, all of whom had perished. She died in London on 3 January 1993 at the age of 94.