tion has at its disposal are incomparably larger than those of the Agro-Joint.”
The thousands of Jewish colonies in the regions where the ICA was operating will now be taken care of by the Soviet government directly. The Jewish colonies which were administered by the ICA are located in the autonomous Jewish regions of New Zlatapol and Krivorog, Ukraine.
Many of the colonies, which will now pass from the supervision of the ICA to the direct supervision of the local Soviets, were established long before the Soviet government came to power. There are colonies which were started under the old Czarist regime. Some of them are over a hundred years old. The colony Dobroe, which is one of the oldest of these colonies, has a population of about five thousand Jews.
The Jewish Colonization Association was active in Russia long before the war. It temporarily suspended its activities during the Bolshevik revolution. It however resumed its work in Russia in 1923, on the basis of a special arrangement made with the Soviet government.
The order issued today by the Soviet authorities, although preventing the ICA from continuing its activities along the lines of promoting Jewish agriculture, does not interfere with the activities which the Jewish Colonization Association is conducting in Russia in granting credit and helping Jews to migrate from the country.
FOUNDED BY BARON HIRSCH
In 1891 Baron Maurice de Hirsch decided to use his immense fortune to save the Jews of Eastern Europe from degeneration and ruin. In view of his knowledge of the historic fate of the Jewish people, he thought the best expedient would be the transporting of Jews into new countries and settling them on land.
He founded the Jewish Colonization Association (ICA) with an initial capital of $10,000,000, to which he later added a further $40,000,000. This was intended to serve as a basis for extensive colonization of Russian Jews in Argentina. During 1892-1897 5,000 Jewish families settled there, but later the colonization movement stopped and the ICA limited itself to consolidating the position of the first groups of settlers.
In 1896 Baron Hirsch died and bequeathed all shares of the ICA to the Jewish communities of Brussels, Berlin, Frankfort, and the Anglo-Jewish Association of London. Each of the above received five thousand shares.
In the articles of the organization Baron Hirsch had stipulated that up to fifty per cent of the capital be spent on the purchase of land and the second half for colonization purposes and loans to Jewish settlers.
Alexander ben Solomon Wimpfen Susskind, who spent almost his whole fortune in ransoming the body of Meir of Rothenburg that had been denied burial for fourteen years, died at Worms in 1307.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
