Jewish life in Harpin, China, 1920s - 1930s
Harbin’s development into a city with a Russian flavor dates from its selection as the hub extending Czar Nicolas’ Trans-Siberian Railway into Manchuria in the late nineteenth century. Eager for colonists to protect his interests in the region, the Czar dropped travel and other restrictions on Jews who agreed to settle there. Ambitious entrepreneurs could arrive penniless, work hard and make fortunes. In a few years, Jews built Beaux Arts mansions, a library, a hospital open to all, music conservatories, cafés, two synagogues, a cemetery, a home for the aged and a soup kitchen. They were key figures in logging, mining and fur trading.
After peaking in the mid 1920s, the Jewish population of Harbin began to decline in response to political and social upheavals. The situation worsened during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s, when Soldiers terrorized the civilian community in the most brutal ways. Soviet forces took the city in 1945 and sent the leaders of many ethnic and religious groups, including some of the Jewish community leaders, to the gulags after accusing them of collaborating with the Japanese. Virtually all remaining Jews left Harbin after the Chinese Red Army took control in 1949, and Manchuria became part of Heilongjiang Province in the new People’s Republic of China.
