1931-1935

Following the occupation of Manchuria in 1931 after the Mukden Incident, Japan initiates a number of steps to tighten political and economic control of the region. The policy has two principal objectives: (1) to force the Soviet influence out of Manchuria and to take control of the CER and (2) to take over or at least to receive a substantial share of  the businesses owned by non-Japanese, including Chinese, Russians, Jews, and Western foreigners. This means destruction of many Jewish businesses.
In 1932 The Revisioninst newspaper Hadegel  (Гадегел) is published and the new publication appears in Harbin.The young leaders of Vladimir Jabotinsky's Zionist Revisionist group Betar bring out this biweekly The ideas brought forward in this second Zionist publication catch on quickly. Headed by Alexander Y. Gurvich as Editor, it includes segments devoted to the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine), the Diaspora, other news of international Jewry and essays by noted Zionists like Jabotinsky, Ussishkin, and Shechtrnan. Gurvich remains the Editor of the magazine until his departure from Harbin in the Spring of 1941. His place is taken by Shmuel A. Klein, who edits the magazine for a year until it was closed by the Japanese in the Spring of 1942.

1933

In the winter of 1933-34 Betar (worldwide) is circulating a petition addressed to the British Government demanding that it abide by its commitments under the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate to assist in the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine. Jabotinsky writes about these petitions that they ''speak with the genuine voice of a mass distress whose painful acuteness, almost worldwide range, and utter hopelessness, no free Nation can even remotely imagine. No free Nation, therefore, should refuse to listen to that voice...''
Members of Harbin Betar spring into action. Boys and girls in their teens visit Jews in town to solicit their signatures. Hundreds of copies of the petition in English with blank pages for signatures are needed almost immediately but sadly there are no funds to print them. In the days before Xerox machines the problem was solved relatively easily - the boys and girls copy the text of the petition by hand on lined fullscap sheets of paper! It is slow going; the handwriting has to be legible, the copy free of spelling errors, and the text is in a language foreign to most of the available scribes.. High school students come upon a simple solution -they convince their English teacher to free them from all other assignments while they toil to produce the petitions in English. And the hundreds of petitions were ready on time!

This year sees the emigration of groups of 'Betarim' to Palestine (1933-1937).

The first of three conferences on the Jewish communities in the Far East is held in December 1937. It is interesting to note that conference platforms are covered with Japanese, Manchukuo and Zionist flags as required by law at that time. Three conferences were held in total. The last one in 1939. The 3rd conference guarded by Betarim and the Macabi youths whilst the 1937 and 1938 conferences were guarded by Betarim only.