Overview

Tombstone Histories is a venture into the strange past of a great Chinese city. Harbin, established in northeastern China in 1898 by Russians and others, was for a time home to some 38 different national communities, before war and revolution destroyed their lives. Harbin also became a safe house and waystation for Jews escaping pogroms and hatred in Europe, and Tombstone Histories presents the Jewish experience in the city in a personal and unforgettable way. It paints a revealing picture, never shown before, of Jewish daily life in this faraway and alien land, of how people functioned, struggled and sometimes thrived in a space that was so different and unfamiliar. Tombstone Histories offers glimpses of the lives of the rich, the poor and those in between with daily stories and reminiscences of close to sixty families. History so often ends up as just a series of tombstones, but this book provides the other side to the story-the personal details of lives which allow readers to draw their own conclusions about the human experience, especially survival.

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9789888769735

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Reviews

"""I loved reading the little details of life. The picture these stories paint is certainly far from heavenly. My certainty is that this will be a great addition to how people view the ""Jewish years"" of Harbin. I feel grateful to have gotten to read this."" - Jean Ispa, Professor Emerita at the University of Missouri"

""I loved reading the little details of life. The picture these stories paint is certainly far from heavenly. My certainty is that this will be a great addition to how people view the ""Jewish years"" of Harbin. I feel grateful to have gotten to read this."" - Jean Ispa, Professor Emerita at the University of Missouri

Author Information

Dan Ben-Canaan has been living in China for over two decades, and has known the country and its people intimately since the late 1980s. He is a Professor Emeritus of Research and Writing Methodologies at the School of Postgraduate Studies, Northeast Forestry University, and Heilongjiang University, School of Western Studies in Harbin. He also serves as Visiting Professor for Advanced Studies with the Postgraduate Studies at Heilongjiang Provincial CCP Party School. He is the founder of the Sino-Israel Research and Study Center (2002) attached to the Harbin Jewish Culture Association which he founded in 2014. His research focuses on the history of Northeast China, known in the past as Manchuria, Harbin as an international and transcultural city, the history of the Jews in Harbin and China, and the Chinese perception of the Jewish people. Among his books are Echoes of Harbin: Reflections on Space and Time of a Vanished Community in Manchuria, and The Kaspe File: A Case Study of Harbin as an Intersection of Cultural and Ethnic Communities in Conflict 1932-1945.

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