Valdgeym

Valdgeym, or Waldheim ( _ru. Валдгейм) is a village ("selo") in Birobidzhansky District of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Russia. Valdgeym was the place where the first collective farm was established in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. [ [http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/biro/html/panel13.html Stalin's Forgotten Zion] ] As of 1992, Valdgeym was the largest farming cooperative in the region. [ [http://www.themoscowtimes.com/indexes/1992/09/11/01.html Search for Identity] ]

History

Valdgeym was founded in 1928 by a group of Jewish settlers from Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland. In 1929, Valdgeym's first school was established with all subjects taught in Yiddish. [ [http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/biro/html/panel13.html Stalin's Forgotten Zion] ] Among the founders was L. Geffen, who, with his family, fled a small shtetl near Vilna, Lithuania. [ [http://www.jta.org/cgibin/iowa/news/article/VeteransofRussias.html Veterans of Russia's Jewish land take lots of pride in the good ol' days] ] In 2004, his son Zyama Geffen, age 83, still lived on the Valdgeym collective farm that his father founded. Zyama was six years old when his father moved to the area in 1928. [ [http://www.fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=212077 Where Russians Cursed in Yiddish] ]

In 1980, a Yiddish school was opened in the settlement. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=52Ew77pZsNUC&pg=PA272&lpg=PA272&dq=waldheim+birobidzhan&source=web&ots=59ePnekVgd&sig=WSkb_3rku-AYgt8hqfmgvFIsuiU The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority] ] During the early 20th century, Soviet Chairman of the Central Executive Committee Mikhail Kalinin desired that Valdgeym and other localities of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast become new centres of Jewish life of the Soviet Union. [ [http://archivum.ws/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/55-3-51.shtml Khrushchev on the Withering Away of the Jewish National Home] ]

References

ee also

*Jews and Judaism in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast