Early life
Abraham Kaufman was born to
Yosef Zalmonovich Kaufman in 1885 in Megilne (Мглине), a
tiny Jewish village near
Chernigov (ex-Chernihovsky Region –– бывшей Черниговской
губернии) in the
Ukraine, then part of the
Russian Empire). He was a great grandson of
Zalman Shneerson, who founded the
Chabad movement. Kaufman graduated from a traditional
Gymnasium Institute (secondary school) in
Perm (Перм), Russia, in 1903, where he became interested
in Zionism. He then studied medicine from 1904 at the
University of Bern, Switzerland, graduating and
returning to Russia in 1908 or 1909.
Kaufman became an ardent
Zionist, and while working in Prem after completing his
medical degree he devoted all his spare time to supporting
the movement, working under Dr. E. V. Chlenov (Е.В.Членов)
in the
Moscow region. He toured a number of cities lecturing on
the
Zionism, and supervised the Hovavei Zion (хавевей-цион)
organization, which was headed by his father Yosef.
Move to China
Kaufman emigrated to
Harbin, China in 1912, and quickly became the community
shtatlan (organizer), active in many Jewish
organizations. In 1914 he helped organize the EKOPO society
(Jewish Committee for the Help of War Victims) to assist
some 200,000 World War I refugees with shelter, food and
medical care.In 1919 he became a Zionist leader in the
Harbin Jewish community, and of
Manchuria (called
Manchukuo when it was occupied by
Imperial Japan) more widely, in the 1930s. He became an
integral part of the cultural organizations of Harbin Jewry.
Between 1919–1945 he was variously:
- medical director of the
Jewish hospital of Harbin
- chairman of the Harbin's
Jewish community
- chairman of the
Jewish National Fund and
Keren Hayesod Zionist fundraising organizations
- board member of
the
World Zionist Organization and the
Jewish Agency
- chairman of the Jewish
Zionist organization of China
- president of the Hebrew
Association of Harbin
- chief editor of the
Evreiskaya Zhizn ("Jewish Life" – Еврейская жизнь)
weekly Jewish magazine in Russian (1921–1943)
- chairman of the National
Council of the Jews of Eastern Asia (Far East) in 1937
He was also the head of the
Far Eastern Jewish Council (FEJ – Национального Совета)
which he helped found, and also the Vaad Haleumi (Ваад-Галеуми),
both founded in 1937 with the encouragement of Japanese
officials such as
Norihiro Yasue.
Activities during the Holocaust
Befriended by
Imperial Japanese Army Colonel Yasue and General
Kiichirō Higuchi, the engineers of the later-named "Fugu
Plan", Kaufman organized three large conferences of the
Far Eastern Jewish Council, which brought together Jews from
across East Asia, and successfully appealed for his
organization to be accepted under the umbrella of the
World Jewish Congress. Through these conferences, he
worked to encourage Jews from other parts of the region, and
the world, to think of
Manchukuo as a safe-haven for Jews, reassuring them, as
his Japanese friends had assured him, that the Japanese were
not
anti-Semitic, nor inclined to be racially discriminatory
against Jews.
In May 1939, Kaufman was
invited on an official visit to
Tokyo, where he visited many of the
ministries of the Japanese government, met with a number
of officials, and became one of the few foreigners to be
honored with an imperial award. He used this opportunity to
express to the government officials with whom he met the
desires, needs and attitudes of the Jews of Manchukuo, and
was reassured of the non-discriminatory attitude of the
Japanese government. He formally thanked
Prime Minister
Nobuyuki Abe for the prejudice-free protection offered
Jews in East Asia by the Japanese authorities, and suggested
that the global Jewish community would be grateful should
Japan create a safe haven in East Asia, and that in return
the Jewish communities of East Asia would support Imperial
Japan's vision for a new order in East Asia.
By 1942, a great number of
Jews had sought refuge in Japan from Eastern Europe,
settling in
Kobe before being moved to the
Shanghai ghetto in China. As early as 1941, the local
Gestapo chief
Josef Meisinger (The Butcher of Warsaw) visited
the ghetto, and proposed plans to
exterminate its Jewish population. Kaufman, through his
influence and contacts in the Japanese government, prevailed
upon Tokyo to prevent Meisinger's plans being carried out.
Ultimately, Kaufman succeeded and Meisinger's schemes were
rejected by Tokyo, but not before the doctor along with
seven other Jewish community leaders were arrested,
imprisoned, and maltreated by the
Kempeitai (Japanese military police) as traitors for
accusing Japan of plotting
genocide. All but one of the community leaders were
released days or weeks after their arrests.
Following his release,
Kaufman returned to Harbin, and to his activities with the
Far Eastern Jewish Council, which included raising
substantial donations to the severely impoverished Jewish
community in Shanghai.
Post–war arrest by the Soviets
In 1945, just days before the
end of World War II, the
Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded
Manchuria, overrunning Harbin. To celebrate the end of
the war a short time later on August 21, the Soviets held a
formal reception to which they invited the many minority
leaders of the city, including Dr. Kaufman. The Soviets then
kidnapped him along with two of his colleagues, Anatoly
Grigorevich Orlovsky (Анатоли Григорьевич Орловски), and
Moses Gdalievich Zimin (Моисее Гдальевич Зимин)). They were
subsequently arrested by the
Soviet Red Army on charges of collaboration with foreign
forces. Kaufman's former college roommate had been another
notable Zionist,
Chaim Weizman, and a passport to
Palestine was immediately issued for the doctor, but the
Soviets refused to release him.
The Jewish community
organizers were taken to the Soviet Union, where Kaufman was
imprisoned in a
Gulag labor camp for 11 years. Zimin would die during
his imprisonment in the Soviet penal labor camp that he was
interned in.
Emigration to Israel
After Kaufman's release from
the Gulag system in 1956, he moved to
Karaganda,
Kazakhstan (Караганде, Казахстан), and on March 25, 1961
emigrated to
Israel. He was joined by his son Theodore (Teddy)
Kaufman, who would later hold a high position in the Israeli
government. Dr. Kaufman spent the remainder of his life
practicing medicine, specializing in
pediatrics under the
Histadrut in Israel, and was buried there after he died
in
Tel Aviv in 1971.
Family
Kaufman's wife also
matriculated in medicine at the University of Bern.
Kaufman’s son Theodore became president of Association of
Former Jewish Residents of China, and also the Israel-China
Friendship Society. He and Heilongjiang Academy of Social
Sciences Professor Qu Wei co-wrote “The Homesick Feeling of
the Harbin Jews”. Theodore’s wife, Rasha Segerman, studied
at the Shanghai Jewish School in her youth.
