No Place [Tientsin, Tianjin]: No Publisher [The Company], 1930s-1940s? Item #42245
No Date (1930s-1940s). 1st edition. Original printed wrappers, 12mo, 8 pages. In Russian. Title translates as “Statutes of the Tianjin Commercial Credit Company.” Copy belonging to Leo Gershevitch, President of the Tientsin Jewish Hebrew Association, The Tientsin Zionist Organization, The Tientsin Jewish Union, the Tientsin Hebrew school, the Culture Club 'Kunst, ’ and other Jewish organizations in Tientsin with his Yiddish stamp on cover. Jews were involved in the Western Banking industry in Tianjin, China, but until 1904 only ten Jewish families lived in Tientsin. In 1906 the Jews established the Tientsin Jewish Union which rendered various religious services. Side by side with this union the Tientsin Hebrew Association was active in the city and took care of welfare needs such as soup kitchens, hospitals, homes for the elderly, etc. The 1917 Russian Revolution fueled the rapid growth of the city's Jewish population with many Jewish immigrants from Russia, resulting in Tianjin supporting the third largest Jewish community in China in the 1920s and 1930s, after Shanghai and Harbin. In 1935, the number of Jewish people in Tianjin reached 3,500. Though most Jews left the city after the 1949 Chinese Revolution. (sinojudaic.org/tianjin), large numbers of Jewish refugees had been streaming to Tianjin before and during World War II, with the city occupied by the Japanese from July 1937 to August 1945. For more on the Tianjin/Tiensin Jewish community, see https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/harbin/Growing_Up_in_Tientsin_Chapter_22. pdf. A copy of a similar booklet, which also has a copy in OCLC sold at auction in 2023 for $875 (with commission). This work, however, is unlisted in OCLC and was un-findable on Google. It is possible there are no other surviving copies out in the world. Two punch holes (for filing) to inner margin, (probably as issued, no text affected). Very Good Condition, a beautiful copy and exceedingly rare (Holo2-160-3).