The first generation of Harbin Russians were mostly the builders and employees of the Chinese Eastern Railway. They moved to Harbin in order to work on the railroad. At the time Harbin was not an established city. The city was almost built from scratch by the builders and early settlers. Houses were constructed, furniture and personal items were brought in from Russia. After the plague epidemic, Harbin's population continued to increase sharply, especially inside the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone. In 1913 the Chinese Eastern Railway census showed its ethnic composition as: Russians – 34313, Chinese (that is, including Hans, Manchus etc.) – 23537, Jews – 5032, Poles – 2556, Japanese – 696, Germans – 564, Tatars – 234, Latvians – 218, Georgians – 183, Estonians – 172, Lithuanians – 142, Armenians – 124; there were also Karaims, Ukrainians, Bashkirs, and some Western Europeans. In total, 68549 citizens of 53 nationalities, speaking 45 languages.[30] Research shows that only 11.5 percent of all residents were born in Harbin.[31] By 1917, Harbin's population exceeded 100,000, with over 40,000 of them were ethnic Russians.[32]
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In the early 1920s, according to Chinese scholars' recent studies, over 20,000 Jews lived in Harbin.[39] After 1919, Dr. Abraham Kaufman played a leading role in Harbin's large Russian Jewish community.[40] The Republic of China discontinued diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1920, so many Russians found themselves stateless. When the Chinese Eastern Railway and government in Beijing announced in 1924 that they agreed the railroad would only employ Russian or Chinese nationals, the emigres were forced to announce their ethnic and political allegiance. Most accepted Soviet citizenship.
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dropped to around 30,000.[58]
Many of Harbin's Jews (13,000 in 1929) fled after the Japanese occupation as the Japanese associated closely with militant anti-Soviet Russian Fascists, whose ideology of anti-Bolshevism and nationalism was laced with virulent anti-Semitism.[59] The Kwantung Army sponsored and financed the Russian Fascist Party, which after 1932 started to play an over-sized role in the Harbin's Russian community as its thugs began to harness and some times killed those opposed to it. Most Jews left for Shanghai, Tianjin, and the British Mandate of Palestine.[60] In the late 1930s, some German Jews fleeing the Nazis moved to Harbin. Japanese officials later facilitated Jewish emigration to several cities in western Japan, notably Kobe, which came to have Japan's largest synagogue.
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Harbin once housed one of the largest Jewish communities in the Far East before World War II. It reached its peak in the mid-1920s when 25,000 European Jews lived in the city. Among them were the parents of Ehud Olmert, the former Prime Minister of Israel. In 2004, Olmert came to Harbin with an Israeli trade delegation to visit the grave of his grandfather in Huang Shan Jewish Cemetery,[66] which had over 500 Jewish graves identified.[33]
An extraordinary history.
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