The Jewish Communities of Harbin and Tianjin

Abstract This chapter examines the contexts in which, at the end of the nineteenth century, Harbin and Tianjin (Manchuria) welcomed a Jewish community of Russian background. As well as anti-Semitism within the Russian Pale of Settlement, additional factors drove the Jews to leave: the completion of the trans-Siberian railway, the opening of its trans-Manchurian branch, and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. Migrants came from within the entire Jewish zone of residence, from Vilnius to Odessa. The First World War and the persistence of pogroms then led to the arrival of an additional wave of Jewish migrants. Three events curbed the growth of these Jewish communities: the radicalization in the late 1920s of a fraction of the Orthodox community; the military occupation of Manchuria by Japan (1931–1945); and the invasion of Manchuria by the Soviet army in 1945. The Jewish community of Harbin and Tianjin then gradually dispersed.