Where the Jews aren't : the sad and absurd story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish autonomous region
(2017)

Nonfiction

eAudiobook

Provider: hoopla

Details

PUBLISHED
[United States]: Tantor Audio , 2017
Made available through hoopla
EDITION
Unabridged
DESCRIPTION

1 online resource (1 audio file (5hr., 53 min.)) : digital

ISBN/ISSN
9781541423503 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) MWT11903389, 154142350X (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) 11903389
LANGUAGE
English
NOTES

Read by Christina Delaine

In 1929, the Soviet government set aside a sparsely populated area in the Soviet Far East for settlement by Jews. The place was called Birobidzhan. The idea of an autonomous Jewish region was championed by Jewish Communists, Yiddishists, and intellectuals, who envisioned a haven of post-oppression Jewish culture. By the mid-1930's tens of thousands of Soviet Jews, as well as about a thousand Jews from abroad, had moved there. The state-building ended quickly, in the late 1930's, with arrests and purges instigated by Stalin. But after the Second World War, Birobidzhan received another influx of Jews-those who had been dispossessed by the war. In the late 1940's a second wave of arrests and imprisonments swept through the area, traumatizing Birobidzhan's Jews into silence and effectively shutting down most of the Jewish cultural enterprises that had been created. Where the Jews Aren't is a haunting account of the dream of Birobidzhan-and how it became the cracked and crooked mirror in which we can see the true story of the Jews in twentieth-century Russia

Mode of access: World Wide Web

Additional Credits