I'm wondering if Gary Rogovin is looking for information about Borobidjian/Birobidzhan. It was not a work camp per se but for those who took the chance to go it proved to be a virtual one. It was an effort conceived by Lenin and jumpstarted by Stalin in 1928 to rid Russia of Jews and isolate them by creating a "Jewish state" there, just across the border with China. Many Jews went there from all over the Russian territory and some even from Europe and America, thinking it would be their own new homeland. They had to start from scratch, building their houses, the infrastructure, all their cultural institutions. As it was on the far edge of Siberia the land was practically unworkable, the climate practically unliveable. Some 41,000 Jews came at the outset, about 28,000, over half, had left voluntarily by 1938. Per an article about the "project" by 1938 all the members of the political leadership and the writers club members had "disappeared into labor camps." Today very few Jews are left there, but the autonomous region remains and is populated by a mix of ethnicities.
Jessica Falikman Attiyeh
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Received on 2015-08-28 13:28:17