When Qinzhan was four years old, the family returned to live in China, but a few years later his mother and sister returned to Russia and Qinzhan remained in China, where he was raised by his father.

Qinzhan’s life in China was not easy.  He suffered from anti-Semitism and the sense of being an alien. His two sons were shot to death during the Great Cultural Revolution in China during the sixties because they refused to be reeducated.

Qinzhan’s nephew, the son of his sister, lives in Israel and received the immigrants at the airport.  After they landed members of the family were taken to the Jewish Agency Absorption Center “Yeelim” in Beersheba.

Prior to the establishment of the State of Israel,  two major Jewish communities existed in China: one community, totaling scores of thousands of refugees and their descendants who fled Russia at the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 (including the parents of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) lived in the city of Harbin. Likewise about 20,000 Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe settled in the city of Shanghai during the Second World War.  After the establishment of the State of Israel most of the Jews immigrated to Israel.  Today there is a small Jewish community in Harbin and a few additional hundreds of Jews live in Hong Kong. Qinzhan’s family immigrated from the southern city of Qingdao where organized Jewish communal life did not exist.

Photos credit: Sason Tiram.

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