Jewish refugee in China
1946 issued passport.
These Soviet passports were printed after the war for a specific purpose.
They were printed by the government printing press GOZNAK in 1946.
After the war, China was flooded with refugees from nearly all possible nations. But a specific type was being eyed by the neighbor up north, those former Russians, the “White Russians”, who settled in north-eastern China during and after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. They were seen, always, as enemy of the state and they wanted them back, back home, and badly.
During the 1930’s and 1940’s, most of the former Russian civilians found refuge in Manchuria, in the city of Harbin. The city housed many local and foreign aid organizations, mainly from the US, such as the Joint, who aided financially and also with goods, material and food for those desperately needing assistance. Many received support in obtaining immigration documentation out of China, and those who were lucky to receive such help, travelled to the US, Australia, United Kingdom, for example, by issuing them passports for travelling abroad, allocated to them by the local police authorities. And those who did not leave in time, before the outbreak of WW2, ended up in internment camps in Manchuria, for example around Mukden
(Shenyang – 沈阳), or were sent further south to Shanghai. The latter had civilian internment camps for allied civilians trapped in China and in addition allocated a section of the city for the Jewish refugees, known as the Shanghai Ghetto (established in 1943).
One such unlucky individual was Tatyana Bilick (born in Harbin in 1920 and completed her studies as a dentist) who spent the war years under Japanese occupation. By war’s end, she and her mother Rebecca found their way south to the port city of Tianjin, 90km east of Beijing.
Both she and her mother applied for the Soviet passports at the consulate general on October 17th 1946. As mentioned above, the Soviet government was very keen in having her ‘former citizens’, now living in China, return back home. There are some reports that several had been enticed, and returned back. But as reports began to leak out of the unfavorable treatment that awaited the returnees, others have learned that returning home was not at their best interest. But this did not prevent them from applying for proper documentation for travelling abroad, but not necessarily back to Russia.
Both of the women, after obtaining their passports, were inspected by the city’s police on May 17th , with their passports rubber-stamped with an additional boxed stamp indicating that they will “not apply for re-entry visas back into the country once leaving abroad“. From there, they travelled to another southern Chinese city, Qingdao (青岛), formerly a German colony that was handed over to the Japanese after WWI. There the two, after applying for the exit visa from the local police authorities on May 24th 1946, set off for Shanghai. It was there that they obtained the right papers, aliens exit permit dating October 31st 1949 which was issued by the newly founded Peoples Republic of China, and visas, to travel to their final destination, the State of Israel. They boarded a ship on November 5th, entering Haifa port on December 27th 1949 as new immigrants.
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