Kyrgyzstan

Osh preserves evidence of one of the oldest Jewish communities within the territory of modern Kyrgyzstan. Medieval geographic accounts associate Jews with Osh and other settlements along the Central Asian trade routes. In the nineteenth century the city supported both Bukharan and Ashkenazi Jewish communities, which lived largely in separate districts. By the end of the nineteenth century Osh had become the largest Jewish population centre in Kyrgyzstan and maintained a separate Jewish cemetery.

Bishkek, historically known as Pishpek and later Frunze, developed into the principal Jewish centre of Kyrgyzstan. A small Jewish population was present during the Russian imperial period, and approximately 250 Jews lived there by 1900. The community expanded dramatically during the Soviet period through migration, political exile and the arrival of wartime refugees and evacuees. Kyrgyzstan's first officially permitted public synagogue opened in Frunze in 1941, and Bishkek remains the principal centre of Jewish communal life in the country.

Karakol developed a small Ashkenazi Jewish population following Russian expansion into the region. One Jewish resident was recorded in 1885, and the community grew gradually during the following decades. Thirty-one Jews were living in Karakol by 1910. A small Jewish presence continued into the modern period.

Kant became one of the smaller Soviet-era Jewish centres of Kyrgyzstan. Jewish settlement increased during the Second World War as refugees and evacuees arrived from western areas of the Soviet Union. A synagogue was established in Kant during the wartime period, alongside those operating in Bishkek and Osh.