Harbin חרבין
A Russian-Jewish city in Manchuria: the community was founded in 1903 beside the railway, Rav Aaron Kiselev led it for thirty-six years, and in 1985 the last Jewish woman of Harbin died.
Harbin grew up along the Chinese Eastern Railway, and Jews went where they were let in: in the Russian Empire the Pale held them, in Manchuria it did not. They came from Odessa and the Russian south, especially after the pogroms; the community was founded in November 1903, and the prayer house on Artillery Street was begun in 1907.
For thirty-six years, from 1913 to 1949, Rav Aaron Moshe Kiselev led the community—and led it through everything: the revolution, the White emigration, the Japanese occupation. In its best years Harbin had a gymnasium, a hospital, newspapers, a bank and two synagogues—a whole Russian Jewry on Chinese soil.
The end came after the war: some were taken to Soviet camps, the rest left for Israel, Australia, America. The institutions closed in 1963, and in 1985 Hanna Agre died—the last of the community. The synagogue and the Jewish cemetery of Harbin are preserved and kept in order.
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The archives of the Harbin community and its newspapers — the founding in 1903; Rav Kiselev 1913–1949; the closing in 1963
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Hanna Agre, the last of the community, 1985
Basis: documents and evidence.