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NEWS
Jewish Cemetery in Harbin Renovated But Olmert's Visit
Cancelled
by Yated Ne'eman Staff
Shortly before PM Ehud Olmert's visit to China last week
local news agencies reported that the Chinese government
spent $385,000 to renovate the Jewish cemetery in Harbin,
capital of Heilongjiang Province in Manchuria, now part of
China. Olmert, whose family lived in Harbin at the beginning
of the 20th century, was unable to pay respects at his
grandfather's gravesite there as planned due to technical
difficulties and the complexities involved in traveling to
the city in Northeast China. Still the reports on Olmert's
"Chinese roots" aroused interest in the history of the Far
East's largest Jewish community, which numbered 15,000 Jews
at the end of the 1920s.
Ehud Olmert's great-great-grandfather was a Cantonist who was
snatched away and forced to serve in the Czar's army for 25
years. Upon his discharge he settled in Samara on the banks
of the Volga River. Olmert was probably a distortion of his
real name, which has since been forgotten. Fearing pogroms
the family fled Russia and arrived in Manchuria, where Jewish
communities were springing up at the time. Olmert's parents
grew up in Harbin and his family moved to Eretz Yisroel.
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