Esther Barsel

The country of Liberia issued a postage stamp in March 2011 honoring Esther as one of the Legendary Heroes of Africa.

Barsel counted among her friends former South African President Nelson Mandela. Her death came almost three months to the day after joining him and 24 other of his closest friends for his private lunch to commemorate his ninetieth birthday. Mandela sent a letter of condolence to Esther's family, and it was read aloud at the funeral in Johannesburg on 7 October 2008:

At 14:30 on 19 October 2008, a memorial service was held at Women's Jail, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg. In his invitation to members of the public to attend the service, the Secretary of the SACP's JHB Branch wrote,

Barsel's fight for workers' rights was lifelong; as late as 2006, at the age of eighty-one, she was blogging information about the defunct Friends of the Soviet Union. [1]

Esther was private secretary to Chris Hani, the South African Communist Party leader, after his 1990 return from Lusaka from 30 years of military exile. Hani was assassinated on 10 April 1993.

A number of those charged had been held under the 90-day detention law and were subjected to ill treatment. One of these, Ms Sylvia Neame, was sentenced to two months' imprisonment for trying to escape from custody. The other accused were Mr. Louis Baker, Ms. Esther Barsel, Mr. Hymie Barsel, Ms. Mollie Doyle, Ms. Florence Duncan, Dr. Costa Gazides, Mr. Norman Levy, Ms. Jean Middleton, Ms. Ann Nicholson, Mr. Ivan F Schermbrucker, Mr. Paul Trewhela and Mr. Eli Weinberg. In April 1965, after they had been in custody for nearly a year, the fifteen were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from one to five years.

Esther was sent to the remote Barberton Prison for three years of hard labor in 1965. She was in the women's ward, next to her cell was Nelson Mandela's cell for a period before he was sent to Robben Island, and close by was the cell where Hymie was held in solitary confinement. After Esther's release she was also "Banned" for a period of approximately 20 years.

The trial of Mr. Bram Fischer was primarily an attempt to remove and imprison the leadership of the SACP. On 26 August 1964, Bram Fischer, a senior lawyer who had led the defense of the Rivonia trialists, and fourteen other people were arrested and charged with having furthered the aims of the SACP or being office-bearers, officers, or members of the party. The charge sheet alleged that they aimed at "establishing a despotic government based on the dictatorship of the proletariat" in South Africa. Esther had been the link between the banned liberation movements and activists working openly, she was detained and then kept in solitary confinement. Esther and other communist women began a hunger strike, hoping this would compel the police to charge or release them.

Hymie Barsel was accused in the 1956 Treason Trial. A group of 156 black and white activists – including Chief Albert Lutuli, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu – were put in the dock after a countrywide crackdown following the adoption of the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People in Kliptown at the end of 1955. The group represented almost the entire executive of the then all-African ANC, the white Congress of Democrats, the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Congress and the South African Congress of Trade Unions. Together, they were known as the Congress Alliance, and they were stoic as the state charged them with high treason and conspiracy to use violence to overthrow the government. The punishment was, of course, death.

Esther worked as a secretary/bookkeeper for Friends of the Soviet Union where she met Hymie Barsel, the coordinator of the project. They married in Johannesburg on 4 December 1945. They travelled the country together promoting Karl Marx.

In 1926 Joseph Levin went to South Africa under the Lurije identity, changing his name back to Levin upon arrival in South Africa. Esther was 6 months old when he left Lithuania. He stayed with Sonia's brother Abraham Bloom (ex Garrenblum) in Middelburg. Esther & her mother Sonia followed in 1927; entry records into South Africa show Esther Luriane (aged 3 yrs) arrived in 1927 by boat. Joseph Levin then bought a farm store about 18 miles from Middelburg which he sold in about 1936. They then moved to Johannesburg.

Esther Barsel (born 17 October 1924, in Raguva, Lithuania; died 6 October 2008, in Johannesburg) was a South African political activist and long-standing member of the South African Communist Party (SACP). She was a member of both her local African National Congress branch and the SACP's Johannesburg Central Branch.

Barsel was the daughter of Joseph Levin of Kubelake from Ukraine and Sonia Garenblumaite of Raguva from Lithuania. Joseph Levin said he was escaping pogroms in Ukraine when he relocated to Raguva about 1915. Later he assumed the identity of a dead man, Lieb Lurije, in order to avoid detection.