Five Jewish families have arrived in Birobidjan, once the autonomous Jewish region in Siberia, the first new Jewish settlers there in many years, according to a report in the Moscow newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya. The five families will live on a collective farm.
The newspaper quoted the chairman of a local Jewish collective as asserting that 60 more Jewish families would soon settle in Birobidjan which the Communists originally created as a Jewish region to counter the appeal of the Zionist movement among the Russian Jewish masses.
The Moscow newspaper pegged to the news report, a long and glowing description of the “opportunities” offered Jews in the Soviet Union as compared to the hardships and disappointments it alleged awaited the Jewish immigrant to Israel.
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.
