BIROBIDZHAN, RUSSIA -- Mikhail Kul was a soldier in the Soviet Army that helped defeat Germany in 1945, but he returned home to find that the Holocaust had emptied his Ukrainian village of most of its inhabitants.
The survivors told of the German atrocities -- of the Nazi soldiers who drove a crowd of Jewish villagers into a river and machinegunned them. His mother watched from the grass where she was hiding. Among the victims was Kul's cousin. She died cradling her baby.
So when a group of recruiters showed up in 1947, Kul and his surviving family members were ready for the message. Far away, Jews were building a new state and settlers were needed. They were invited to contribute to the rebirth of their people. Kul and his family left the Ukraine and traveled 10,000 km to their new home on the border with China: the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.