Lea Mariasin, Soviet Jewish Cancer Patient, Dies Surrounded by Family

Lea Mariasin died as she lived — surrounded by her family. The Soviet Jewish cancer patient passed away June 30 at Toronto General Hospital, where she had been hospitalized for several weeks as her condition deteriorated. About a week before she died, Mariasin suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma, from which she never awakened.

Friend Joyce Eklove — who met Mariasin, her husband Alexander and younger daughter Faina five years ago when she visited them in Riga — said that the family including older daughter Rita Yoresch of Israel was with her constantly.

“She was unconscious the last week but the family had a sense of communication with her … she seemed to react when they spoke to her,” said Eklove, who noted that Mariasin “always put on a brave front. Even when she was in pain, when anyone asked her how she felt, she always said a bit better than yesterday.”

Mariasin was the fourth of the original six members of the International Cancer Patients Solidarity Committee to die in the past few months. Eklove said the Mariasins’ dream was to go to Israel, where their daughter Rita has lived for the past 15 years with her husband and two children.

After 15 years of refusal, the Mariasins were permitted last February to join her sister and brother-in-law, Mara and Eugene Katz, here. This successful bid for medical treatment was due to the efforts of the Katzes, B’nai B’rith Canada and the Canadian government.

Montreal oncologist Dr. Gerald Batist, the co-founder of the solidarity committee, said that Mariasin had a “fairly indolent (slow-growing) myeloma which reached a rapid progression after she arrived here. She demonstrated a resistance to certain drugs.

“She lost a lot of time. Her illness — diagnosed about five years ago — was held in abeyance by her husband’s skill in learning medical treatments … they made a lot of clinical decisions together.”