Sofia Beilin

Deputy mayor of Ashkelon. An epidemiologist by training: the Second Leningrad Medical Institute, specialising in the sanitation and hygiene of children and adolescents, and worked in that field until leaving.

Immigration to Israel in 1994, and Ashkelon from the first day onward. Medicine had to be left behind, and the experience went into public work instead: sanitary services for hotels, the national Briut association defending immigrant medical professionals, and from 1999 the Avrora association.

A member of the Ashkelon city council since 2001 and deputy mayor since 2008. Those years brought an information centre for Russian-speaking residents, a home for new immigrants, municipal cultural and sports venues, sister-city ties, and the volunteer headquarters opened on the third day of the war.

The personal archive — photographs, documents and video recordings going back to 1988 — is sorted by city council terms and open in full.

Based on the official biography and corroborated by the personal archive.