Where the Jews Aren't

The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region

By: Masha Gessen

Narrated by: Christina Delaine

In 1929, the Soviet government set aside a sparsely populated area in the Soviet Far East for settlement by Jews. The place was called Birobidzhan. The idea of an autonomous Jewish region was championed by Jewish Communists, Yiddishists, and intellectuals, who envisioned a haven of post-oppression Jewish culture. By the mid-1930s tens of thousands of Soviet Jews, as well as about a thousand Jews from abroad, had moved there. The state-building ended quickly, in the late 1930s, with arrests and purges instigated by Stalin. But after the Second World War, Birobidzhan received another influx of Jews - those who had been dispossessed by the war. In the late 1940s a second wave of arrests and imprisonments swept through the area, traumatizing Birobidzhan's Jews into silence and effectively shutting down most of the Jewish cultural enterprises that had been created. Where the Jews Aren't is a haunting account of the dream of Birobidzhan - and how it became the cracked and crooked mirror in which we can see the true story of the Jews in 20th-century Russia.

©2016 Masha Gessen (P)2017 Tantor

The Jewish World of Our Ancestors

Very moving. It revealed what happened to the Russian Jews who were not killed at the turn of the 20th Century and lived through the Russian Revolution and the start of the USSR. Most important was the history of Yiddish and the culture of the Jews during WWII and throughout Eastern Europe during and after the war. I had never heard of The Dream of Birobidzhan the proposed homeland for the millions of Jews of Eastern Europe before Hitler.

Recommended for all interested in Israel, Jewish History and Live in Russia after the revolution and before Putin.

Fascinating History and a Little Scary

Masha Gessen is able to capture both the comic ridiculousness of being issued a “certificate of cowlessness” under the Soviet system and the gravity of collective grief so powerful that we are only able to comprehend it through singular narratives - the shooting of an old Jewish writer for walking too slowly on a death march. Their writing is honest and unromantic, but never unkind. I highly recommend.

so interesting

such a weird story that I can listen to it again and again and again

Soviet antisemitism on demand

I thought I understood what my great grandfather escaped from, I did not and I thought I understood Stalin's terror - I did not.

Such an important story

I love Masha’s writings. But her account of individuals plight to just survive and keep some form of hope, and their language, is both inspiring and heart wrenching. I am just blown away at how much I didn’t know. I highly recommend for everyone. This is history that is not taught and it should be.