World LOCATION

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The World ORT (Organization - Reconstruction - Training) is a non-governmental organization that was founded in Russia in 1880 as the "Society for craft and agricultural work (among Jews)". ORT's headquarters were relocated to Berlin in 1921 and are now in Geneva . In the more than one hundred year history of its existence, well over a million people have completed school training at ORT. Today the organization operates in 58 countries around the world.

history

Memorial plaque Berlin, Bleibtreustraße 34–35

The organization was founded in the tsarist empire under the name "Обсество ремесленного и земледельческого труда" (Obschtschestvo remeslennogo i zemledeltscheskogo truda) . In April 1880 , based on an edict from Tsar Alexander II , five Russian-Jewish philanthropists , including Samuel Polyakov, Naphtali Herz Günzburg (called Horace) and Nikolai Bakst , signed a "private letter" to promote vocational training for Jews in Russia . A million rubles were collected for this purpose by 1905, but this sum was lost in the October 1917 Revolution . It was not until 1906 that the organization received official approval. At first, ORT existed only in the Russian Empire. At that time, one of the organizational goals was the resettlement of Jewish craftsmen from the Pale of Settlement to other parts of Russia.

In 1921 ORT was established in Berlin as an international organization under the name World ORT Union . It was now called Obščestvo razprostranenija techničeskich znanij i remeslennago truda sredi evreev , Общество ремесленного и земледельческого итруда среесв еврода среди евроеди еврода With increasing internationalization, the social significance of World ORT also increased, which was active in the newly established states that had become independent from the Russian Empire as well as in Germany, France, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.

After former ORT students had settled in Palestine since the 1920s, ORT set up vocational training courses for immigrants soon after the establishment of the State of Israel .

Today, Israel is a focus of ORT's activities: In 2003, 90,000 people received training in the 159 ORT institutions in Israel.

ORT's activities in Germany ended in 1952 after many people, especially displaced persons , received vocational training here in the post-war years and then largely emigrated to Israel. The focus of activity was in Bavaria, where the US occupation forces had been persuaded in an arduous struggle to support ORT until 1949; these structures continued to be used until 1952. From then on there were no longer enough people willing to emigrate to keep operations going.

See also

literature

  • Encyclopaedia Judaica , Vol. 12, pp. 1481-1486
  • Joseph Harmatz: Life with Place . LOCATION Israel, Tel Aviv 2002
  • Alexander Ivanov: sewing machines and diamond rings. The activity of the Berlin ORT 1920-1943. In: Verena Dohrn (Ed.): Transit and Transformation. Eastern European Jewish migrants in Berlin 1918-1939 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, pp. 195-209. ISBN 978-3-8353-0797-1 .
  • Alexander Ivanov: LOCATION. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 4: Ly-Po. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-476-02504-3 , pp. 444-449.
  • Alexander Ivanov: From a Russian-Jewish Philanthropic Organization to the 'Glorious Institute of World Jewry': Activities of the World ORT Union in the 1920s - 1940s , pp. 386–416, in: Jörg Schulte, Olga Tabachnikova, Peter Wagstaff (eds .), The Russian Jewish Diaspora and European Culture 1917-1937 , Brill, Leiden 2012. ISBN 9789004227149 .

Web links

Commons : World LOCATION  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anne-Christin Saß: Berliner Luftmenschen: Eastern European Jewish migrants in the Weimar Republic . Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, pp. 205–215
  2. ↑ For example: On June 14, 1928, the Berlin ORT group informed the press about negotiations between ORT and the Soviet government with the aim of supplying Jewish craftsmen in Russia with tools. D. L'vovič reported on it.