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23 March to 15 July 2012 Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in the 1920s
15/17

Markgrafenstr. 87
16/17

Bleibtreustr. 34/35

17/17

Lindenstrasse 3

ORT

Building with a white façade, stores and trees in front
Bleibtreustrasse in 2012 © Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Gelia Eisert

In the 1920s one of the most important Jewish relief organizations in the world was headquartered not far from the train station at Savignyplatz: the Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor (ORT). Founded in 1880 in St. Petersburg, ORT worked to provide vocational training for the oppressed and impoverished Jews of the Russian Empire.

Today »World ORT« is based in London and works in more than one hundred countries around the world. It is the largest global Jewish NGO for education and vocational training.

Statement by the researcher Alexander Ivanov

»Bleibtreustrasse 34/35: between 1921 and 1926 this building was home to the headquarters of the ORT Union, an international non-profit organization devoted to promoting the skilled trades and agricultural labor among Jews. I was quite moved when I stood in front of the building for the first time. You can still find many traces of ORT’s history in Berlin – while reading the Yiddish and Russian magazines in the State Library, for example, or when visiting the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Political Archive of the Foreign Office.«

Alexander Ivanov is a guest researcher from St. Petersburg who is currently participating in the project “Charlottengrad and Scheunenviertel” at the Free University of Berlin.

ORT was founded by Russian-Jewish Enlightenment thinkers in St. Petersburg. It provided the impoverished Jewish population with the opportunity to learn a trade and with financial assistance to start a business in agriculture.

As a result of the 1917 October Revolution, ORT lost all its bank deposits and nearly all its private donations. In addition, the Bolsheviks greatly restricted its practical work. In 1921 ORT moved its headquarters to Berlin and that same year its leaders founded the World ORT Union in Berlin, which initially consisted of committees from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Bessarabia, Germany, France, Britain and the United States.

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