After ten years of work in Soviet Russia, the Jewish Colonization Association (ICA), the first foreign Jewish relief organization to work under the Soviet regime, was ordered today to liquidate its activities.
The order was issued by the Comzet, the government committee for settling Jews on land, of which Peter Smidovitch, vice-president of the U. S. S. R., is chairman. The order states that the Jewish Colonization Association must no longer continue its colonization activities in the Jewish autonomous regions in the Ukraine, where it has been operating since 1923.
An explanation as to what caused the drastic order was given by Comzet officials in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The statement points out that the ICA was actually engaged in self-liquidation during the past few years and was no longer sufficiently active in promoting Jewish colonization in Russia.
“The Jewish Colonization Association was merely camouflaging its self-liquidation activities by investing three hundred thousand rubles a year only in its colonization projects in Russia,” the Comzet statement declares. “This sum is only one-tenth of the sums which the Agro-Joint, the American Jewish organization, is investing annually in Jewish colonization work in Russia. This is notwithstanding the fact that the funds which the Jewish Colonization Associa-
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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.
