The Organization for Jewish Colonization in Russia (Yidishe Kolonizatsye Organizatsye in Rusland), known by its transliterated acronym as the ICOR (or YKOR) was a Jewish Communist organization in North America devoted to supporting settlement in the Jewish socialist republic of Birobidzhan in the Soviet Union. It was founded in the United States in 1924 and soon spread to Canada.

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. One of ICOR's initial patrons was Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company who contributed more than $2 million to ICOR.[1] 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.

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.It merged with another organization, Ambijan (American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan),that also supported Birobidzhan, in 1946.

[edit] See also

• Yevsektsiya
• Jews in the Soviet Union
• Jews and Judaism in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast

[edit] References

• Red star over Birobidzhan: Canadian Jewish Communists and the "Jewish Autonomous Region" in the Soviet Union. BNET