Dr. Abraham Josevich Kaufman (Абрам Иосифович Кауфман, b. November 22, 1885 – d. March 25, 1971) was a Russian-born medical doctor, community organizer and
Zionist
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
who helped protect some tens of thousands of Jews seeking safe-haven in East Asia from
Nazi atrocities
The governments of the German Empire and Nazi Germany (under Adolf Hitler) ordered, organized and condoned a substantial number of war crimes, first in the Herero and Namaqua genocide and then in the First and Second World Wars. The most notabl ...
during World War II.
As a consequence of his contacts with Japanese authorities during World War II and the
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...
, he was kidnapped, arrested and imprisoned by
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
authorities immediately after the war, and was interned in a Soviet
Gulag penal labor camp from 1945 to 1956.
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
i authorities subsequently worked to expedite his
immigration to Israel
Aliyah (, ; he, עֲלִיָּה ''ʿălīyyā'', ) is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel, which is in the modern era chiefly represented by the State of Israel. Traditionally describe ...
, where he was able to resume his medical practice.
Early life
Abraham Kaufman was born to Yosef Zalmonovich Kaufman in 1885 in Megilne (Мглине), a tiny Jewish village near
Chernigov
Chernihiv ( uk, Черні́гів, , russian: Черни́гов, ; pl, Czernihów, ; la, Czernihovia), is a city and municipality in northern Ukraine, which serves as the administrative center of Chernihiv Oblast and Chernihiv Raion within t ...
(ex-Chernihovsky Region –– бывшей Черниговской губернии) in
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
, then part of the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
). He was a great grandson of Rabbi
Shneur Zalman of Liadi
Shneur Zalman of Liadi ( he, שניאור זלמן מליאדי, September 4, 1745 – December 15, 1812 O.S. / 18 Elul 5505 – 24 Tevet 5573) was an influential Lithuanian Jewish rabbi and the founder and first Rebbe of Chabad, a branch of ...
, who founded the
Chabad
Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch (), is an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic dynasty. Chabad is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, particularly for its outreach activities. It is one of the largest Hasidic grou ...
movement. Kaufman graduated from a traditional
Gymnasium Institute (secondary school) in
Perm
Perm or PERM may refer to:
Places
*Perm, Russia, a city in Russia
** Permsky District, the district
**Perm Krai, a federal subject of Russia since 2005
**Perm Oblast, a former federal subject of Russia 1938–2005
**Perm Governorate, an administra ...
, Russia, in 1903, where he became interested in Zionism. He then studied medicine from 1904 at the
University of Bern
The University of Bern (german: Universität Bern, french: Université de Berne, la, Universitas Bernensis) is a university in the Swiss capital of Bern and was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the Canton of Bern. It is a compreh ...
, Switzerland, graduating and returning to Russia in 1908 or 1909.
[Dr. A. J. Kaufman](_blank)
Jewish Communities of China website, January 12, 2002. Retrieved October 28, 2010.
Kaufman became an ardent Zionist, and while working in Perm after completing his medical degree he devoted all his spare time to supporting the movement, working under Dr. E. V. Chlenov (Е.В.Членов) in the Moscow region. He toured a number of cities lecturing on
Zionism
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
, and supervised the
Hovevei Zion
Hovevei Zion ( he, חובבי ציון, lit. '' hose who areLovers of Zion''), also known as Hibbat Zion ( he, חיבת ציון), refers to a variety of organizations which were founded in 1881 in response to the Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russ ...
(хавевей-цион) organization, which was headed by his father Yosef.
Move to China
Kaufman emigrated to
Harbin, China in 1912, and quickly became the community ''shtadlan'' (organizer), active in many Jewish organizations.
[Bickers, Robert & Henriot, Christian]
New Frontiers: Imperialism's New Communities in East Asia, 1842-1953: Studies in Imperialism
Manchester University Press ND, 2000, pp.99-101, , . In 1914 he helped organize the EKOPO society (Jewish Committee for the Help of War Victims) to assist some 200,000 World War I refugees with shelter, food and medical care.
[Vladimirsky, Irena]
The Jewish Community of Harbin
Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot website. Retrieved 27 October 2010. In 1919 he became a Zionist leader in the
Harbin Jewish community, and of
Manchuria
Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...
(called
Manchukuo when it was occupied by
Imperial Japan
The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent forma ...
) more widely, in the 1930s. He became an integral part of the cultural organizations of Harbin Jewry. Between 1919 and 1945 he was variously:
* medical director of the Jewish hospital of Harbin
* chairman of the Harbin's Jewish community
* chairman of the
Jewish National Fund and
Keren Hayesod
Keren Hayesod – United Israel Appeal ( he, קרן היסוד, literally "The Foundation Fund") is an official fundraising organization for Israel with branches in 45 countries. Its work is carried out in accordance with the Keren haYesod Law-5 ...
Zionist fundraising organizations
* board member of the
World Zionist Organization
The World Zionist Organization ( he, הַהִסְתַּדְּרוּת הַצִּיּוֹנִית הָעוֹלָמִית; ''HaHistadrut HaTzionit Ha'Olamit''), or WZO, is a non-governmental organization that promotes Zionism. It was founded as the ...
and the
Jewish Agency
The Jewish Agency for Israel ( he, הסוכנות היהודית לארץ ישראל, translit=HaSochnut HaYehudit L'Eretz Yisra'el) formerly known as The Jewish Agency for Palestine, is the largest Jewish non-profit organization in the world. ...
* chairman of the Jewish Zionist organization of China
* president of the Hebrew Association of Harbin
* chief editor of the ''Evreiskaya Zhizn'' ("Jewish Life" – Еврейская жизнь) weekly Jewish magazine in Russian (1921–1943)
* chairman of the National Council of the Jews of Eastern Asia (Far East) in 1937
He was also the head of the Far Eastern Jewish Council (FEJ – Национального Совета) which he helped found, and also the ''Vaad Haleumi'' (Ваад-Галеуми), both founded in 1937 with the encouragement of Japanese officials such as
Norihiro Yasue
was an Imperial Japanese Army colonel who played a crucial role in the so-called Fugu Plan, in which Jews were rescued from Europe and brought to Japanese-occupied territories during World War II. He was known as one of Japan's "Jewish experts", ...
.
[Tokayer. pp.55–56.]
Activities during the Holocaust
Befriended by
Imperial Japanese Army
The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...
Colonel Yasue and General Kiichirō Higuchi, the engineers of the later-named "
Fugu Plan
Shortly prior to and during World War II, and coinciding with the Second Sino-Japanese War, tens of thousands of Jewish refugees were resettled in the Japanese Empire. The onset of the European war by Nazi Germany involved the lethal mass persecuti ...
", Kaufman organized three large conferences of the Far Eastern Jewish Council, which brought together Jews from across East Asia, and successfully appealed for his organization to be accepted under the umbrella of the
World Jewish Congress
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) was founded in Geneva, Switzerland in August 1936 as an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations. According to its mission statement, the World Jewish Congress' main purpose is to act as ...
. Through these conferences, he worked to encourage Jews from other parts of the region, and the world, to think of
Manchukuo as a safe-haven for Jews, reassuring them, as his Japanese friends had assured him, that the Japanese were not
anti-Semitic, nor inclined to be racially discriminatory against Jews.
In May 1939, Kaufman was invited on an official visit to Tokyo, where he visited many of the
ministries of the Japanese government, met with a number of officials, and became one of the few foreigners to be honored with an imperial award. He used this opportunity to express to the government officials with whom he met the desires, needs and attitudes of the Jews of Manchukuo, and was reassured of the non-discriminatory attitude of the Japanese government. He formally thanked
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...
Nobuyuki Abe
was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, Governor-General of Korea, and Prime Minister of Japan.
Early life and military career
Abe was born on November 24, 1875, in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, the son of former samurai Abe Nobumitsu. ...
for the prejudice-free protection offered Jews in East Asia by the Japanese authorities, and suggested that the global Jewish community would be grateful should Japan create a safe haven in East Asia, and that in return the Jewish communities of East Asia would support Imperial
Japan's vision for a new order in East Asia.
By 1942, a great number of Jews had sought refuge in Japan from Eastern Europe, settling in
Kobe before being moved to the
Shanghai Ghetto
The Shanghai Ghetto, formally known as the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees, was an area of approximately one square mile in the Hongkew district of Japanese-occupied Shanghai (the ghetto was located in the southern Hongkou and southwes ...
in China. As early as 1941, the local
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
chief
Josef Meisinger
Josef Albert Meisinger (14 September 1899 – 7 March 1947), also known as the "Butcher of Warsaw", was an SS functionary in Nazi Germany. He held a position in the Gestapo and was a member of the Nazi Party. During the early phases of World War ...
(''The Butcher of Warsaw'') visited the ghetto, and proposed plans to
exterminate its Jewish population. Kaufman, through his influence and contacts in the Japanese government, prevailed upon Tokyo to prevent Meisinger's plans being carried out. Ultimately, Kaufman succeeded and Meisinger's schemes were rejected by Tokyo, but not before the doctor along with seven other Jewish community leaders were arrested, imprisoned, and maltreated by the ''
Kempeitai
The , also known as Kempeitai, was the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945 that also served as a secret police force. In addition, in Japanese-occupied territories, the Kenpeitai arrested or killed those suspecte ...
'' (Japanese military police) as traitors for accusing Japan of plotting
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...
. All but one of the community leaders were released days or weeks after their arrests.
Following his release, Kaufman returned to Harbin, and to his activities with the Far Eastern Jewish Council, which included raising substantial donations to the severely impoverished Jewish community in Shanghai.
Post–war arrest by the Soviets
In 1945, just days before the end of World War II, the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
declared war on Japan and invaded
Manchuria
Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...
, overrunning Harbin. To celebrate the end of the war a short time later on August 21, the Soviets held a formal reception to which they invited the many minority leaders of the city, including Dr. Kaufman. The Soviets then kidnapped him along with two of his colleagues, Anatoly Grigorievich Orlovsky (Анатолий Григорьевич Орловский), and Moses Gdalievich Zimin (Моисей Гдальевич Зимин)). They were subsequently arrested by the
Soviet Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...
on charges of collaboration with foreign forces. Kaufman's former college roommate had been another notable Zionist,
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann ( he, חיים עזריאל ויצמן ', russian: Хаим Евзорович Вейцман, ''Khaim Evzorovich Veytsman''; 27 November 1874 – 9 November 1952) was a Russian-born biochemist, Zionist leader and Israe ...
, and a passport to
Palestine was immediately issued for the doctor, but the Soviets refused to release him.
The Jewish community organizers were taken to the Soviet Union, where Kaufman was imprisoned in a
Gulag labor camp for 11 years.
[Ossin, Archie]
Jews in China
, January 2001.[Xu Xin, Ember, Melvin; Ember, Carol R.; Skoggard, Ian (Eds.)]
''Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World'': Vol. I, Jewish Diaspora in China
Springer 2004, p.159, . Zimin would die during his imprisonment in the Soviet penal labor camp that he was interned in.
Emigration to Israel
After Kaufman's release from the Gulag system in 1956, he moved to
Karaganda
Karaganda or Qaraghandy ( kk, Қарағанды/Qarağandy, ; russian: Караганда, ) is the capital of Karaganda Region in the Republic of Kazakhstan. It is the fourth most populous city in Kazakhstan, behind Almaty (Alma-Ata), Astan ...
,
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
, and on March 25, 1961, emigrated to
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
. He was joined by his son Theodore (Teddy) Kaufman, who would later hold a high position in the Israeli government. Dr. Kaufman spent the remainder of his life practicing medicine, specializing in
pediatrics under the
Histadrut in Israel, and was buried there after he died in
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the ...
in 1971.
Family
Kaufman's wife also matriculated in medicine at the University of Bern.
[Detailed History of Harbin](_blank)
, retrieved October 29, 2010, from the Sino-Judaic Institute website, which in turn cites:
:* Ehrlich, Mark Avrum
Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture
ABC-CLIO, 2009, , ; as well as:
:
Kaufman’s son Theodore became president of Association of Former Jewish Residents of China, and also the Israel-China Friendship Society. He and Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences Professor Qu Wei co-wrote “The Homesick Feeling of the Harbin Jews”.
Theodore’s wife, Rasha Segerman, studied at the Shanghai Jewish School in her youth.
See also
*
East Asian Jews East Asian Jewish communities have existed for centuries. Even as the majority of the Jewish people settled in the Holy Land, Europe, and America, some traveled East Asia and settled. Today, due to the increasing ease and decreasing price of communi ...
*
Hakkō ichiu
*
History of the Jews in Japan
*
History of the Jews in Kobe
*
Jewish settlement in the Japanese Empire
Shortly prior to and during World War II, and coinciding with the Second Sino-Japanese War, tens of thousands of Jewish refugees were resettled in the Japanese Empire. The onset of the European war by Nazi Germany involved the lethal mass persecuti ...
*
Shanghai Ghetto
The Shanghai Ghetto, formally known as the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees, was an area of approximately one square mile in the Hongkew district of Japanese-occupied Shanghai (the ghetto was located in the southern Hongkou and southwes ...
, organized by the Japanese Government during World War II
References
;Notes
;Bibliography
* Ben-Canaan, Dan
Nostalgia vs. Historical Reality Heilongjiang University, School of Western Studies, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, P.R.C., 2007.
* Kaufman, Abraham, translation: Tzur, Benny
Camp Doctor: 16 Years in the Soviet Union JewsOfChina.org website.
* Tokayer, Marvin & Swartz, Mary. "The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews During World War Two", Weatherhill Inc., New York, 1979.
* Eber, Irene
Chinese and Jews: Encounters Between Cultures Vallentine Mitchell, 2008, pg.14, , .
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaufman, Abraham
1885 births
1971 deaths
Ukrainian Jews
Chinese Jews
Jewish Chinese history
Jewish Japanese history
People of Manchukuo
Chinese Zionists
People who rescued Jews during the Holocaust
Ukrainian emigrants to Israel
Israeli Jews
Israeli people of Belarusian-Jewish descent
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to China
Russian emigrants to Israel