The Jewish Autonomous Region by David Bergelson, illustr., 1st and only ed., Moscow, in English 

Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1939., 48 pp., 6 photo plates; Litho soft cover; design by the artist H. Klering

 Bound in a new leather binding, with the original cover, 

Size: 15.8 x 12 cm. 

Condition: damage to spine of cover (peeled off), very light staining and browning to soft cover, good condition.

 Weight: 150 gr.

 Propaganda booklet by the playwright and writer David Bergelson (1884-1952) depicting the good conditions of the Jews of Birobidzhan under the rule of the Soviet Union. Accompanied by six photographs depicting farmers, governmental buildings and sites in Birobidzhan. The logo of the USSR pavilion at the New York World's Fair (1939) – a worker holding a red star in his outstretched hand – appears on the front free endpaper (presumably, the booklet was distributed at the fair for propaganda purposes). With a map of Birobidzhan on the front cover. All books about Birobidzhan were destroyed during the fight against cosmopolitanism. 

David (or Dovid) Bergelson (Yiddish: דוד בערגעלסאָן, 

Russian: Давид Бергельсон, 12 August 1884 – 12 August 1952) was a Yiddish language writer born in the Russian Empire. He lived for a time in Berlin, Germany, before moving to the Soviet Union following the Nazi rise to power in Germany. He was a victim of the post-war antisemitic "rootless cosmopolitan" campaign and one of those executed on the Night of the Murdered Poets. Bergelson was born on August 12, 1884, in the shtetl of Okhrimovo (also known as Okhrymovka, now Sarny, Cherkasy Oblast) in Kiev province. His early years were characterized by pogroms throughout the Pale of Settlement, catalyzed by the assassination of Czar Alexander II by a group of five young revolutionaries that included one Jew among them. Bergelson grew up in a wealthy, religious, and Yiddish-speaking family. His father was a grain and timber merchant who spoke no Russian, maintaining his business entirely within the Jewish community. His mother came from a richer cultural background of writing and books. A maskil, a scholar in the Jewish Enlightenment movement, tutored him in Hebrew, Russian, and his parents' Yiddish. The extent of this tutoring was insufficient to allow Bergelson to enter a higher educational institution in later life. Bergelson first became known as a writer in the wake of the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. From a Hasidic background, but having received both religious and secular education, much of his writing is reminiscent of Anton Chekhov: stories of "largely secular, frustrated young people…, ineffectual intellectuals…",[2] frustrated by the provincial shtetl life. Writing at first in Hebrew and Russian, he only met success when he turned to his native Yiddish; his first successful book was Arum Vokzal (At the Depot) a novella, published at his own expense in 1909 in Warsaw. In 1917, he founded the avant garde Yidishe Kultur Lige (Yiddish Culture League) in Kiev. In spring 1921 he moved to Berlin, which would be his base throughout the years of the Weimar Republic, although he traveled extensively through Europe and also visited the United States in 1929-30, to cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. According to J. Hoberman, he was "the best-known (and certainly the best-paid) Russian Yiddish writer of the 1920s". Until the mid-1920s he wrote for the New York City-based Yiddish-language newspaper The Forward. His 1926 essay "Three Centers" expressed a belief that the Soviet Union (where Yiddish language and literature were then receiving official patronage) had eclipsed the assimilationist United States and backwards Poland as the great future locus of Yiddish literature. He began writing for the Communist Yiddish press in both New York (Morgen Freiheit) and Moscow (Emes), and moved to the Soviet Union in 1933, around the time the Nazis came to power in Germany. He was positively impressed with the Jewish Autonomous Republic of Birobidzhan, and participated in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II, co-editing the literary section of the Committee's journal, Eynikayt (Unity). However, like many Soviet Jewish writers, he became a target of the antisemitic "rootless cosmopolitan" campaign. Arrested in January 1949, he was tried secretly and executed by a firing squad in the event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets on 12–13 August 1952. After Stalin's death, he was posthumously rehabilitated in 1955, and his complete works were published in the Soviet Union in 1961. Bergelson's only child, Lev Bergelson [ru], was an eminent Soviet biochemist who also served as a Soviet Army captain during World War II. Prof. Lev Bergelson emigrated to Israel in 1991 with his wife Naomi, where both he and his wife died in 2014. 

Hans Karl Klering (November 8, 1906, Berlin – October 30, 1988, Berlin) was a German actor and director. Born into a working-class family, he graduated from a communal and vocational school in Berlin. From 1921 to 1922, he was a member of the Socialist Proletarian Youth (since 1925, the Communist Youth League of Germany, a member of the Communist Youth International). After graduating in 1924, he worked odd jobs, worked in the port (Hamburg, Bremen), and painted posters in Cologne. From 1926, he was a member of the KPD. He was a member of the agitation and propaganda groups "Red Rockets" (Rote Raketen) and "Blue Blouses" (Blaue Blusen) in Cologne and Berlin; "Left Column" (Kolonne Links; since 1930, Berlin). While touring with the group, he remained in the USSR in 1931. He worked as a poster artist and as an announcer for the German service of Moscow Radio. From 1933, he worked as an artist at the Rot Front film factory and also collaborated with other film studios. He studied at the Moscow Institute of Graphic Arts and worked as an artist for the Foreign Literature publishing house. In 1936, he received Soviet citizenship. In 1942, he was mobilized into the labor army and worked as a dispatcher on the construction of an industrial plant in Bakal. From 1942 to 1943, he attended courses at the Comintern School in Kushnarenkovo. He worked with German prisoners of war. In 1945, he attended party advanced training courses in the Moscow region under the name Karl Strauch. He appeared in a number of Soviet films, primarily in bit parts as Germans. In October 1945, he returned to Germany and worked as a film editor for the Central Administration of Public Education. In 1946, he joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). In 1946, he became a licensee for the DEFA film studio and designed its logo. From 1946 to 1950, he served as artistic director and chairman of the board of directors of DEFA. From 1949 to 1950, he was in the USSR. In 1950, he received East German citizenship. Since 1950, he has appeared in approximately 150 films. He was deputy chairman of the Union of Film and Television Workers of the GDR.