A broadcast by Radio Moscow last Saturday contradict recent statements by Nikita S. Khrushchev, Soviet Communist chief and Premier of the USSR, that there are virtually no Jews in Birobijan, the Jewish autonomous region established by the USSR in the late 1920s. The broadcast, intercepted by BBC monitors here, was beamed in English to the North American continent and in Hungarian and Rumanian to the Eastern European countries.
Among the statements by Mr. Khrushchev, who publicly lamented the Jews’ lack of interest in Birobijan, was one to the effect that all that was left in Yiddish in that region were the railroad signs. Saturday’s broadcast, featured an interview with Solomon Gurevitch whom it identified as a foreman in a Birobijan automobile plant. Speaking in Yiddish, “his native tongue, ” Gurevitch painted a picture of a thriving Jewish community with an active Yiddish culture.
The broadcast said that 60 per cent of the region’s population was Jewish, that its two official languages were Yiddish and Russian, and that both are used by the local newspapers and radio stations. A new library containing 2,000 Yiddish volumes has been established and named for Sholom Aleichem, the broadcaster said. Turning to his own personal life, Gurevitch, detailed his Jewish upbringing, his schooling and the fact that he fought in World War II and won the Order of the Patriotic War.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
