History of the Jews in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast

The history of the Jews in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (JAO), Russia, began with the early settlements of 1928.

Yiddish and Russian are the two official languages of the JAO.^[1] According to Peter Matthiessen in The Birds of Heaven, p20-21, “According to local memory, thousands of Jews from Ukraine and elsewhere were transported here during the vast purges and organized famines of the mid-1930s… most of the displaced were city dwellers… a large number of Jews died…”