Birobidzhan (ru: Биробиджа́н, yi: ביראָבידזשאן) is the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Russia; the name is sometimes also used to refer to the entire oblast. It lies on the rivers Bira and Bidzhan, close to the Chinese border and on the Trans-Siberian railway.
A documentary film, L'Chayim, Comrade Stalin! on Stalin's creation of the Jewish Autonomous Region and its settlement by thousands of Jews was released in 2003. In addition to history of the creation of the proposed Jewish homeland, the film features scenes of contemporary Birobidzhan and interviews with Jewish residents.
WALDHEIM (Russia): While the Far Eastern region of Birobijan never became the magnet for the millions of Russian Jews Stalin intended it to be, the few Jews actually living there say they are devoted to their official homeland.
The Soviet dictator intended the region, and its eponymous capital, to be an ideological rival to the Jewish homeland that was gradually taking shape in Palestine under a British mandate, as well as a means to populate an almost deserted territory that he saw at risk of being invaded by neighbouring China.
But those who do live in Birobijan say they are devoted to it and do not want the region to be demoted to just another Russian territory.
In February 1937 in Birobijan, the center of created then Jewish Autonomous Region, an All-Soviet conference dedicated to the problems of development of the Yiddish language was to take place.
However, in an atmosphere of the generating mass political repression the conference was postponed, and later cancelled altogether.
Unlike the 1937 Birobijan Conference that never took place, this conference, without a doubt, has already contributed to stirring up activity of the town cultural institutions, first of all, a museum, a regional archive, a library, and, naturally, the community itself.
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