Last modified: 2014-03-30 by zoltán horváth
Keywords: birobidjan | hebrew | jewish |
Links: FOTW homepage | search | disclaimer and copyright | write us | mirrors
In soviet times, The EAO (Evreyskiy Avtonomiy Okrug)
was part of Khabarovskiy Kray…
Jorge Candeias, 13 Nov 1998
One of the more bizarre Soviet attempts at national engineering, the
Jewish Autonomous Region was established in 1934 as the national homeland
of all Jews. World Jewry, very sensibly, declined to emigrate to their
“homeland”, which today has a Jewish population of under 6%.
The Soviet Regim decided to establish JAR as an alternative for the Zionist
Movement . There were few natives but the majority of the Jews in JAR
arrived from the European part of Russia. The idea didn’t catch the Jews and
only about 35,000 of them (from more than a million) immigrate to JAR. Most
of them left back to the European Russia. They were Ashkenazi’s Jews.
In 1970 only 10 % of the population was Jews and now they are less than 5%
of it and declining.
Dov Gutterman, 18 Nov 1998
I have an old book written by one of the settelers (he left and arrived to
Israel in the 60’s).
The only flags that he mentioned are the flags of the two Soviet Jewish
setteling organizations (KOMZT and OZT). No pictures of the flags but it
seems they were some kind of Soviet banners, with the organization name on
If I recall correctely, in the 30’s, all soviet flags were in one pattern. Red, Soviet symbol
on top left and the name of the region below the symbol.
If the JAR (which was only an "Oblast") had a flag, it was probably in the
Dov Gutterman, 17 Nov 1998