Establishment The founding meeting was held in New York City in December 1924 and the initial mission of the organization was to raise money to fund
Jewish collective farms in Crimea and to provide a humanitarian alternative for Jews facing anti-Semitism in Europe. ICOR was motivated by the situation of the Jews of Eastern Europe who had faced decades of pogroms and turmoil (including almost a decade of war) in the Pale of Settlement and constant threat of anti-Semitism in their countries of refuge in Central and Western Europe. Alternatively, the relative safety and welcome in the
New World yielded what many saw as a trend towards the dissipation of Jewish culture, language, and "nationality". Originally, the committee worked in partnership with its American contributors and Soviet authorities in order to support the newly founded large Jewish collective farms in the former
Pale of Settlement, notably Southern Ukraine and the Crimea. These "kolkhozes" (collective farms) attracted many former
shtetl Jews from Ukraine and Belorussia who had previously fled to larger cities for safety, as well as those whose livelihoods had been disrupted in the requisitions and economic restructuring of the early period of Soviet consolidation. When, in 1928, the Soviet Union abandoned the idea of Jewish settlement in Crimea and endorsed instead the eventual formation of a
Jewish Autonomous Republic in the eastern USSR, ICOR followed suit. ICOR worked closely with the
Komzet, the Soviet agency facilitating Jewish settlement, and its partner, the
OZET. One of ICOR's initial patrons was
Julius Rosenwald, president of
Sears, Roebuck and Company who contributed more than $2 million to ICOR. Rosenwald and many other prominent and wealthy American Jews contributed to ICOR's efforts, and their contributions were supplemented by those of working and middle class readers of the Yiddish press in the United States that carried appeals for funding and support.
Expansion The Canadian wing became a separate organization in 1935. The ICOR was active among first and second generation
Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants and was intended as a rival to the
Zionist movement and its agitation for a Jewish homeland in
Palestine. In the 1930s the organization was also involved in protests against Nazi Germany and encouraged a boycott of German goods and also fundraised for the
International Brigades fighting in the
Spanish Civil War. ICOR was associated with the
Communist Party, USA and the
Communist Party of Canada and generally followed the
Comintern's party line. The organization declined following the signing of the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Ambidjan The American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan (Ambidjan) was established on February 27, 1934, at a meeting held in the
Ritz-Carlton Hotel in
New York City. The meeting was addressed by Lord Marley,
Dudley Leigh Aman, a
British Labour Party Member of Parliament and leading spokesman for the Birobidzhan project in the United Kingdom. Budish's close ties with Soviet Ambassador
Alexander Troyanovsky and position in the Communist Party apparatus made him the ideal conduit for information to Ambidjan regarding developments in the Soviet Union. Following Budish's 1935 talks, Soviet authorities gave Ambidjan permission to proceed with its efforts to subsidize the emigration of European Jews to Birobidzhan. Dues in the organization cost $5. In 1946 ICOR and Ambijan merged to form a unified organization.
Dissolution The organization was unable to withstand the anti-Communism of the
McCarthy era; moreover, the creation of
Israel in 1948 greatly increased the attractiveness of
Zionism as offering an alternative for "Jewish Colonization". The organization was dissolved in 1951. ==See also==