A decade ago Karol Verson was working at a Jewish senior center in Chicago when an elderly man wandered into the office with a battered paper portfolio under his arm. “Listen,” she recalls him saying, “I found this in my basement. Does anybody here want it?” The portfolio contained 14 old woodcuts, most of them in pretty good shape. Verson thought the prints were interesting, so she took them. She didn’t catch the man’s name, and she never saw him again.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The creation of a Jewish Autonomous Region was in keeping with Lenin’s policy of developing official territories for the more than 100 national and ethnic groups that made up the Soviet Union, which he saw as a critical step in creating a unified socialist culture. Soviet Jews had no historical connection to Siberia, but Birobidzhan was rich in natural resources. It was also of strategic interest to the Kremlin, given the potential for Japanese and Chinese aggression.
Less than half of the pioneers lasted more than a few years. Plagued by mosquitoes, mud, disease, and repeated flooding, they lacked the tools with which to build barns and housing. Farming equipment promised by Moscow never arrived. Many of the new farms had no access to potable water. Winters were bitter, summers stiflingly hot. Robert Weinberg writes in Stalin’s Forgotten Zion, “The overwhelming majority of Jews who came to the JAR in its early years had little or no firsthand knowledge of farming, and many were unprepared psychologically and physically for the rigorous demands of pioneer life.” Of those who stuck it out, most gravitated to the capital city of Birobidzhan and nonagricultural employment. Many lived in squalor and were forced to beg or turn to prostitution.
That collection totals around 300 pieces, nearly two-thirds of which are by Chicago and Illinois artists. It includes works of Miro, Dali, Calder, and Oldenburg, as well as a small Richard Hunt bronze, John Pitman Weber’s 1968 eight-panel mural Elements, and pieces by eminent locals such as William Conger, Karl Wirsum, and Ruth Duckworth. Harpaz doesn’t have an acquisitions budget–all of the art comes from grants or private donations.
ICOR was founded in Philadelphia in 1926 to support Soviet efforts to further Jewish autonomy, first in Crimea, then in Birobidzhan. The group championed the goals of the American Communist Party and was openly pro-Soviet in its politics, but it also counted among its supporters such titans of capital as Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck and founder of the Museum of Science and Industry, who donated over $2 million to the cause.
