Jews in Moldova, Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Georgia

Abstract

The rise ofnationalism in Moldova, Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Georgia has had significant repercussions for Jews residing in these regions. Even in those communities where Jews have peacefully coexisted with other ethnic groups for centuries, ethnie resentments and hostilities are beginning to make them extremelyanxious about the present and future. There have been individual incidents of break-ins and attacks reported byword-of-mouth tojoumalists andrepresentatives of organizations concemed with human rights. No research on the subject has been done in these regions. And even systematic reports on antiSemitism there arevery rare. Unlike their Russian counterparts, anti-Semites in these regions did not form impressive Pamyat-like organizations and do not seem to publish newspapers. This makes it difficult to monitor their activities. One can judge how alarming the situation is by examining the growing numbers ofJews who have expressed interest inorwho have moved to Israel. Present!y the number of Jews from these regions who have corne to Canada as refugee claimants is relatively small. However, if the exodus of Jews from these regions increases and Israel continues facing tremendous hardships related to settlement of the former Soviet olim (immigrants), many of them will attempt to come to Canada. There are more than 1.2 million Jews in the former Soviet Union who have invitations to repatriate to Israel. Not all of them are ready to leave their home country. Their decision depends on the political and economic conditions in their country of origin, as weIl as policies and conditions of absorption in Israel. In the first eight months of1992, over 40,000 of them decided to come to Israel. In the first six months of this year the total number of Soviet olim was 27,330, aver-