The third international conference devoted to a history of the Jews in Kazakhstan, as well as previous, taking place in 2002 and 2004 years became the important stage of systematic research of life of the Jews in territory of extensive central Asian region. It once again confirmed alive interest of wide circles of the historians, archivist, and researchers to this theme. On results of a conference was prepared and is issued the collection "Jews in Kazakhstan: a history, religion, culture".

The contents of the read reports and messages was various enough - from strictly theoretical developments of Alexandr Abramovitch, Alexandr Mashkevitch and Alexandr Yarkov, which has taken an attempt of understanding of some aspects of the Jewish history, and up to the brief biographies of the people, which made important enough contribution to development of Kazakhstan.

Except for materials touching questions in this or that measure covered on previous conferences, some new interesting researches were offered to attention of the participants. To them it is undoubtedly possible to concern work of the scientific employee of Ust-Kamenogorsk ethnographic museum Nina Krutova about Judaic burial places in East Kazakhstan. The research is executed not only extremely careful. The genuine interest to the chosen theme - quality is felt with which distinguish also previous works of Krutova, enthusiast of study of the past of the Jews in this remote region.

The small report of Anfisa Kukushkina "Issue of Aranovitch" is interesting to that in it the history of young political prisoner completing of sentence in one of the Karaganda camps at the earliest stage of mass political reprisals in the beginning of 30th is covered. In conditions of a rigid prison mode the young man began struggle for observance of the rights of prisoners.

Detailed research of the worker of archive of the President of Republic of Kazakhstan Eugenia Chilikova about the Jews - party leaders of Kazakhstan in 20th-40th years of the last century contains an extremely valuable material not only on the chosen theme. It can become a source of the little-known items of information for the historians engaged by study of the Soviet period of the Kazakhstan history and to interest those who want more to learn about our recent past. At last, it is necessary to mention and caused alive interest of the participants of a conference to the report of the head of representation of agency "Sokhnut" in Kazakhstan - Josef Lebovitch. As a matter of fact, opportunity for the first time was presented to familiarize with parameters describing number and age structure of those, who has gone away for permanent dwelling in Israel, since 1989 till the present time. The items of information on number gone away are especially curious by that they are given in a cut of republics of former Union.

To list and to characterize each material submitted on conference there is no necessity. We hope that the work done by the participants will be appreciated by the readers of the present collection.

Steering Committee