For the first time since Stalin’s death, letters received here from Birobidjan carry a postal cancellation of mark of JAO, the equivalent of the Russian phrase “Jewish Autonomous Region.” In the intervening five years the cancellation read District of Birobidjan.”
Postal cancellations, clues to the political fate of the Siberian area assigned Jews as a state of their own in the late 1920s, have changed five times in the 30-year history of the region. The first cancellation bore Hebrew characters.
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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.
