A delegation of American technicians and scientists will leave for Soviet Russia this summer to make a survey of Biro-Bidjan, the Russian Jewish autonomous state, it was announced yesterday by Edward Aronow, member of the American Committee for setting German Jewish Refugees in the U. S. S. R., at a press luncheon at the Hotel Claridge. it their report is favorable, the committee will launch a drive for funds to settle Jewish refugees on the land there, Mr. Aronow announced.
Although no non-Russian Jews are at present permitted to settle in Biro-Bidjan, it is expected that the Soviet government will permit Jews from other lands to enter within a few months, Mr. Aronow declared.
The luncheon was held to acquaint the public with the mass meeting at Madison Square Garden Saturday night under the auspices of the ICOR (Association for Jewish Colonization in the Soviet Union). Speakers at the gathering included M. J. Budish, economist and authority on Soviet affairs; Miles Sherover, preside t of the Soviet-American Securities Company, and S. Almazav, national secretary of the ICOR. Max Levin, New York attorney, presided.
COUNTY’S SAFETY
Questioned on the safety of Biro-Bidjan, Mr. Levin declared that Lord Marley, member of the British Supreme Command during the war, had stated that the territory was not in any strategic danger in case of war between Japan and Russia, News items in yesterday’s paper concerning shots fired on the Amur River, which forms the southern border of the region, did not apply to the part of the stream flowing near Biro-Bidjan, Mr. Levin said In that section, he explained , the border of the Amur are very marshy and would make military operations impossible.
Mikhail Kaliuin, president of the Soviet Union, received a delegation of Jewish workers, farmers and writers at Moscow Thursday to discuss settlement of Biro-Bidjan, according to a cable received at the officers of the ICOR yesterday.
“In deciding to transform Biro-Bidjan into a Jewish autonomous region, the Soviet government was not merely following demonstrative ends,” President Kalinin told the delegates. “Personally, I think that in ten years Biro-Bidjan will be the sole conservator of Jewish culture, national in form and socialist in content.
“The Jewish autonomous region should have a country population, which would not have those special traits which were hammered by Czarism into the Jewish population of backward places in the Ukraine, Poland with White Russia.
“The collective farmers of Biro-Bidjan are gradually mastering this district. They are already gathering the material foundations for still further development. Biro-Bidjan must be helped in every way. The Konvet and the Ozet (Soviet organizations for settling Jewish farmers in Biro-Bidjan), which rely for support on all Jewish Workers, can and must play a big role; they should give both organizational and cultural assistance to the Jewish autonomous region.”
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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.
