Mordechai Olmert’s great grandfather was kidnapped as a young child by the Tsar’s army and forced to serve in it for 25 years. Practically all enterprises in Harbin at that time, whether bakeries or coalmines or mills, were closely connected with Jewish economic activity, in addition in 1926 there were 28 companies owned by Jews.Harbin also was a well-known cultural center.
Therefore, Harbin Jewish Community initiated a relief society to help the poor and the sick.

In the years from 1924 to 1931, the Soviet regime, largely preoccupied with internal problems, exercised limited influence on Manchurian territory.

Japanese troops occupied Harbin in 1932, and the city became part of the puppet state of Manchukuo. Some went to the Soviet Union, others to Shanghai, Tien-Tsin and other cities in China. The Center’s director, Li Shuxiao, has visited Israel twice.
He began his studies of medicine in 1904 at the University of Bern, Switzerland. The Olmert family fled what had become a madhouse, to Manchuria in Northeastern China, where they had business connections, and where Jewish and Russian Christian Communities were emerging as part of a Russian drive towards Manchuria.The Olmerts settled in the town of Tzitzikar near Harbin. It is located at a point on the Sungari, or Songhua, River where the railroad intersects with extensive river traffic. All Rights Reserved. Family dynasties, such as the Bonner, Kabalkin, Krol, Mendelevich, Samsonovich and Skidelsky families, played an important role in development of the local industries, especially wood and coal industries.

Ganansky, Dr. A Kaufman, M Y. Elkin, M.I Trotsky, Dr. S.M.Vechter, G. B. Drisin, M.I Schister, and Y. Beiner that initiated this project already in 1919. When Zionism was outlawed in the Soviet Union, he and his Jewish community in Harbin became the only representative of Russian-speaking Zionists. In 1908, he decided to return to Russia, then settled in Harbin in 1912 and became involved in community life and international Zionist activity. The Harbin branch of the HaShomer HaTzair was set up in 1927, and in 1929, the Zionist youth movement Betar was founded, mainly by a large group of former members of the HaShomer HaTzair movement.The introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the Soviet Union, in 1925, stimulated another wave of Jewish emigration, some crossing the borders illegally while others received assistance from the Jewish community in order to pay the large amounts of money in foreign currency required by the Soviet government for issuing visas.When Zionism was outlawed in the Soviet Union, Harbin became an island of Russian-language Zionism. The Japanese maintained relations with the Jewish communities of Harbin and Shanghai, hoping, through them, to win investment and favorable influence from western Jews (the so-called “Fugu plan”). Human settlement in the Harbin area dates from at least 2200 BC during the late Stone Age. The bank’s prime customers were Jewish businesses in need of cheap credit, but later it also catered to the needs of the wider business community. The growing Jewish population decided to build a new synagogue, which was called the “Main Synagogue”. This situation changed drastically for the worse with the Japanese occupation of Manchuria (1931-45) and the establishment of a puppet regime, under which Jews were subjected to terror and extortion.A native of Mglin, a tiny Jewish village near Chernigov, Russia. By the mid-1960s virtually all Harbin Russians had left Harbin.

Wanyan Aguda, the founder and first emperor (reigned 1115-1123) of the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), was born in the Jurchen Wanyan tribes who resided near the Ashi River in this region. Its foundation was laid on May 3, 1907 and the building completed in January 1909. The Revisionist-Zionists held three more conferences, which were attended by Japanese and Manchurian authorities.The Japanese tried to use Harbin and Shanghai Jewish communities to entice western investment into their “co-prosperity sphere”.

By 1908, there were about 8,000 Jews in the city. The second conference was held in 1938 and the third in 1939. During a hundred years of time, it received many celebrities from all circles, including Song Qingling, the wife of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, Puyi, the last emperor in Chinese history, the great painter Xu Beihong, and Guo Moruo, the famous writer and historian. Jewish Harbin, there was a great diversity of opinion, people held a wide range of political philosophies and expressed their Judaism in very different ways. Until 1921, Zionists of Harbin were affiliated with the Russian and Siberian Zionist organization and participated in their conferences. Mordechai headed for China, visiting Jewish communities there, gravitating to Harbin.