The Soviet government is planning to make concessions to the Jews of Birobidjan to distract world public opinion from the pleas of Soviet Jewry for equity with other Soviet communities, according to reliable Jewish sources. The sources said the Kremlin’s leaders will discuss a revival of Jewish colonization at next month’s Communist Party Congress and have decided to permit synagogues, yeshivas and schools. In addition, the only Jew in the Soviet hierarchy–Deputy Premier Veniamin Emmanuilovich Dymshitz, a 60-year-old politician and engineer, winner of the Order of Lenin and two-time winner of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor–visited Birobidjan recently to supervise the planning of public buildings and housing. Birobidjan, in Eastern Russia, was designated in 1928 as a Jewish Autonomous Region for “contiguous Jewish settlements” based on agricultural and industrial opportunities. There were an estimated 50,000 Jews in the 14,000-square-mile region in 1939 out of a total estimated population of 108,400. There are now an estimated 15-16,000 Jews out of a total estimated population of 198,400.
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