Welcome to Paradise: A Jewish Homeland on the Chinese Border
VIEW EVENT DETAILSL'Chayim, Comrade Stalin tells the story of a small area of Russia's Far East, along the Chinese border, which was once known as the Jewish Autonomous Region. In Soviet times, Joseph Stalin encouraged Jewish settlement in this vast wilderness of eastern Siberia, where young idealists built a homeland rich in Jewish culture. Director Yale Strom, along with Mark Hetfield of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, will present L'Chayim, Comrade Stalin and discuss this little-known region.
This film traces the history of Birobidzhan, the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Region, from 1928 to the present. Heeding the slogan "To a Jewish land," Jews from the USSR as well as Canada, the US, Poland, France, and Argentina, among other countries, made the arduous trek, by boat and train, to Siberia. The region, rife with disease and deprivation, was a crushing disappointment to these first pioneers. In subsequent years, despite encouragement from organizations such as AMBIJAN and IKOR, Jewish immigration steadily declined.
In March 2000, American filmmaker Yale Strom flew to Moscow to begin a seven-day trip, via the Trans-Siberian Railroad, to Birobidzhan. Accompanying him was interpreter-bodyguard (and former KGB agent) Slava Andreovich, grandson of Mikhail Kalenin, first president of the USSR and architect of the Jewish Autonomous Region. Fascinating footage from Russian archives and scenes from the Soviet propaganda film Seekers of Happiness are woven into the journey. In Birobidzhan, his interviews with early Jewish pioneers of the J.A.R. and young proponents of the revival of Yiddish culture, paint a vivid portrait of contemporary Jewish life in Russia--a compelling tale of the perseverance of Jews and Yiddish culture in the face of forced migration, anti-Semitism, and great privations--as well as the circumstances surrounding this unique chapter in history.
L'Chayim, Comrade Stalin has won numerous awards including Official Selection, Berlin International Film Festival, Official Selection, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, and the Bronze Phoenix Award at the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival.
Yale Strom is one of the world's leading scholars and performers of klezmer and Rom music and history, with a prodigious body of work that includes 12 books, 13 recordings, seven documentary films, numerous photo exhibitions, and three dramas. Strom is also artist-in-residence in the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University.
Mark Hetfield is the Senior Vice President for Policy & Programs at HIAS. Since 1989, he has held a wide range of positions in the field of immigration and refugee law in the private, non-profit, and government sectors, including four non-consecutive positions at HIAS. Hetfield was on the staff of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, where he was the Commission's senior advisor on refugee issues and directed a Congressionally authorized study on the treatment of asylum seekers in Expedited Removal, which was released in February 2005.
Event Details
Asia Society Washington, The Cinnabar Room, Whittemore House (2nd Flr), 1526 New Hampshire Ave, NW