If Beijing was the beginning of the journey, Harbin is where memory takes hold.
In the third episode of our China series, we arrive in Harbin—the unlikely northern city that became home to one of the most vibrant Jewish communities of the 20th Century. In the 1920s and 1930s, more than 30,000 Jews lived here, creating a full and flourishing Jewish world far from Europe: synagogues and bakeries, hospitals and soup kitchens, schools, businesses, and cultural life.
But the story of Harbin’s Jews is not only about survival or community—it is also about transformation. These Russian- and Eastern European-born Jews were among the driving forces that helped turn Harbin from a remote outpost into an industrial and commercial powerhouse, shaping the city’s modern identity.
In this episode, we walk in their footsteps. We visit the physical remnants of Jewish Harbin: a former synagogue, the old commercial center, a historic hotel, and the Jewish cemetery. Each site is layered with absence and presence, silence and echoes.
The journey becomes deeply personal as seven Israelis—children of Harbin Jews—return to the city their parents once called home. For some, it is a first visit. For all, it is an emotional reckoning. There are tears. There is laughter. And there is the powerful realization that Harbin is not just a chapter in Jewish history—it is a hometown.
This is a story of belonging in unexpected places.
Of loss, legacy, and return.
Of where our parents walked—and where their footsteps still linger.
David was the guest of the the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation and the Chinese Enterprises Association in Israel.
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