Facing east: the World ORT Union and the Jewish refugee problem in Europe, 1933–38

Abstract

The World Union of Societies for Promotion of Artisanal and Agricultural Work among the Jews (ORT Union) was created in Berlin in 1921 by emigrants from Russia, veterans of the Russian ORT that had been founded in St Petersburg in 1880. By 1933, the ORT Union represented a transnational association of public philanthropic organisations and maintained a large network of professional schools and vocational training courses scattered all over Eastern Europe. After the advent of the Nazis in 1933, the ORT Union managed to work out and fulfil several relief programmes directed towards the rescue of the German Jews and improving the refugee problem. The ORT leadership considered the remote Birobidzhan region in the USSR as a possible asylum for the German‐Jewish refugees and tried to organise their large‐scale resettlement there. Although, because of a considerable change in Stalin’s foreign policy in the late 1930s, this ambitious plan was not fulfilled in full measure, the efforts of the ORT Union to rescue German Jews and solve the refugee problem undoubtedly led to an expansion of its activity and created a transcontinental network of technical and agricultural training institutions. ORT’s connection to the migratory processes of this period cannot be overestimated, especially in relation to professional training, which allowed thousands of refugees to adapt in a very short time to the new socioeconomic reality in the countries of their destination. Using documentary sources preserved in archives in Russia, Britain, Germany and Israel, this article analyses the all‐embracing programmes offered by the ORT Union for ameliorating the Jewish refugee problem in Europe from 1933 until the eve of the Second World War.