The first group of Jewish emigrants from the Argentine to the Jewish settlement area of Bureya in Siberia arrived here to-day and were given a big welcome by the Jewish Communists. The group consists of 33 members and there are 14 more at Hamburg on their way. They are all stated to be skilled builders, who have brought their own tools. The editor of the Argentine Communist daily “Red Star”, Mr. Chaim Rosen has come with them. A second group of 30 members is stated to be on the way.
An appeal to Jews in South America and all other countries to start a wholesale immigration movement into Russia, particularly into Bureya, has been made by the Jewish Communist leader Dimanstein in a leading article in the Jewish Communist daily “Emess”.
The Government Commission for Jewish Settlement (Comzet), he says, has drawn up a programme for settling 55,000 Jews in Bureya, but the programme lags behind because of the lack of the prime need for immigration, proper homes for the new arrivals.
Mr. Dimanstein does not explain why the programme for building homes in Bureya is behind and why the Russian Jews themselves cannot build homes there, but he urges Jews from other countries, especially Jews who know something of the building industry, to come to Bureya to build homes for themselves and others and to “grow up with the country”.
Bureya, he writes, is a land suitable not only for agriculture, but for all sorts of trades and industries. It is a region for fish culture, canning and preserving. Moreover it is a region which, as has been indicated by President Kalinin, is ultimately to become an autonomous Jewish region.
Mr. Dimanstein points to the great wave of unemployment existing in capitalist countries and claims that thousands of Jews in those countries are ready to come to the Soviet Union. Only such Jews should be encouraged to emigrate to Russia, he says, who are known to be favourable to the Soviets.
Mr. Dimanstein does not say why Russian Jews cannot be induced to go to that remote Sibeian region, when thousands upon thousands of them are in need of employment.
We have temporary difficulties in Bureya, Mr. Dimanstein admits, but these will soon cease. The more population we have there the easier life will become. The Far East is growing and Bureya will grow with it.
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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.
