(And is this a Mandarin area, or another dialect?)
This is the most heartwarming story I’ve read in months.
Though Harbin, capital of Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, was credited as an international municipality with exotic historical architectural style, the sudden arrival of nearly 100 Jews was still something to marvel at.
They are not visitors, but were excited to stand again in the old synagogue, streets, houses and schools they were so familiar with about more than half a century ago.
They came to take part in a three-day international forum on the history and culture of Harbin Jews, which concluded on Monday, and also to witness the opening of an exhibition of the same theme.
[…] For several decades from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, more than 20,000 Jewish people came to Harbin. They came to escape the waves of anti-Semitism in Russia and Europe, according to Qu Wei, president of the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences.
“Harbin people, with their unique and broad-minded hospitality, accepted and developed long-lasting friendships with them,” Qu said. “That history is a brilliant page in China’s humanitarian record.”
[…] Bein expressed her appreciation of the peaceful childhood she enjoyed in Harbin.
“During the war, when the whole of Europe was aflame, we enjoyed a comfortable life,” she said.
By the end of the World War II, there were about 30,000 Jews in China.
“Thirty thousand people came and 30,000 people left China,” said Teddy Kaufman, President of Association of Former Residents of China and Israel China Friendship Society.
“Nobody was killed,” he said.
Thank you, Harbin.
Harbin has preserved the largest Jewish cemetery in East Asia, which has about 600 tombstones and includes the grave of the grandfather of the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
No, really, thank you, Harbin.
The city’s dozens of Jewish assembly halls, hotels, schools, hospitals, banks, shopping malls, dwelling houses, kindergartens and office buildings, some of which are nearly a century old, are protected by Harbin municipal government.
Holy crap! Thank you, Harbin.
Is there any other nation in the world who has done as much? (Not counting America, which has never persecuted her Jews.)
Wow. Just—wow.
The Jewish community of Japan, which was incorporated in Tokyo in 1953, was originally composed almost exclusively of Jews from Harbin and Shanghai (most of them originally from Russia/USSR) who came to Japan between the end of WWII and the Communist takeover in 1949.
All the old folks and their kids have died or moved away and the composition of the community now is different, but in the beginning they were almost all from China.
You can say whatever you want about China, but they were never in the institutionalized anti-Semitism business like a lot of other places.
The Japanese and Chinese were relatively good to the Jews; the Japanese in particular pissed off the Nazis by not rounding up and gassing us in Shanghai, where there were 20K plus Jews, mostly fled from either the Nazis or the Russian Revolution.
Harbin is part of the old Manchuria, and I suspect Mandarin is the correct dialect.
I’m not sure I agree that there was never persecution of Jews in the US; that’s something that ‘s open to quibbling based on the definition of persecution. I agree it’s never been official government policy. I also am not aware of any Canadian or Mexican policy to that effect; and I’m sure people can enlighten me about Central and South America, including Argentina which is home to the Seminario Theologico, one of the three oldest Conservative seminaries in the world…
I mean government-sponsored persecution. Bigotry is everywhere, but America has treated its Jewish community extremely well these 350 years.
Also, the Chinese are protecting the old Jewish buildings, where in other places where Jews used to live (like Europe), they’ve been torn down and converted to other uses.
I can’t think of any other country that has done as much for preserving the heritage of its Jewish community.
I agree. Although the history in the 30’s and 40’s regarding government policy towards Jews and discrimination, while not reaching the level of codification in law, was shameful.
I can tell you from personal experience in Shanghai that the Ohel Rachel shul has been kept locked up except for diplomatic missions when it was dusted off and goverment types were brought in on tour. The Ohel Moshe shul is kept as a musem and anyone who visits Shanghai should go there…