Joseph Berger-Barzilai (Russian: Иосиф Михайлович Бергер-Барзилай, romanized: Iosif Mikhaylovich Berger-Barzilay, original name Itskhak Mordukhovich Zheliaznik, Russian: Ицхак Мордухович Желязник; 29 November 1904 – 31 March 1978) was a founding member and the secretary of the Communist Party of Palestine and a Comintern official in Soviet who fell victim to Stalin's purges.
In 1914, his family fled the Russian army which threatened to invade their city for Vienna, and returned in 1916.
[1] In 1924–25, Berger-Barzilai spent a few months in Moscow, where he met his wife Esther Feldman, a Russian Jew.
In a summary trial, he was sentenced to death, but was pardoned and sent to prisons and slave labor camps in Siberia.
Berger remained a staunch communist, and relates that he and his family had lost a common language when they had abandoned Marxism.