44 new and old factories with 6,000 people constitute the centre of the O.R.T. work in the Union of Soviet Republics, Mr. Zegelnitzky, the representative in Russia of the .O.R.T. World Federation, said to-day in outlining the main features of the O.R.T. programme of work for 1931 in the Soviet countries on the eve of his departure for Berlin to attend the plenary session of the O.R.T. Federation Executive Committee, which has to approve the budget for the coming year.
None of these factories are connected with the traditional Jewish trades like tailoring and shoemaking, Mr. Zegelnitzky declared, but are concerned exclusively with the metal and woodworking trades. The O.R.T. has undertaken to assist in providing instruction for 2,555 young Jews who have been assigned to factories in Leningrad, Nizhni-Novgorod, Magni-Togorsk, and Kertsch to obtain technical experience, he went on. The Comzet demands that the O.R.T. should also assist in the industrialisation work in the Crimea. This matter will be submitted for decision to the Executive of the O.R.T. Federation in Berlin.
The O.R.T. expects to engage in an intensive campaign of repairing old machines and supplying new parts for those new machines which have been sent into Russia through the medium of the O.R.T. by Jews living abroad for the use of their relatives in the small towns of White Russia and the Ukraine, Mr. Zegelnitzky added, and it will also take up the continuation of the aid activity to 2,500 families in the newer colonies in the Odessa region.
A similar point about the drift of the Jews of the Soviet countries from the tailoring and shoemaking trades to the metal and other heavy industries was made this week by the Jewish Communist leader, Mr. Mereszin, in his report to the Conference of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee-reported in the J.T.A. Bulletin of the 20th. inst. The economic position of the Jews in the Soviet Union has been completely revolutionised in the past two years, he claimed. Formerly the needle trades and the leather trades were the two occupations in which the Jews were engaged, but now the number of Jews working in the Soviet metal industries exceeds the number of Jews in all other trades. Of the total Jewish proletariat, he said, 43 percent is connected with the large industries, while the Jewish artisans number now only 25 percent. In one single metal factory at Dnepro-Petrovsk there are 5,000 Jewish workers.
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