Metadata: The Curatorium of the Jewish Cultural Self Government in Tartu
Collection
- Country:
- Estonia
- Holding institution:
- State Archives of Estonia
- Holding institution (official language):
- Eesti Rahvusarhiiv
- Postal address:
- Tallinn, Maneeži 4, 15019
- Phone number:
- (+372) 693 8668
- Web address:
- http://www.ra.ee/
- Email:
- rahvusarhiiv@ra.ee
- Reference number:
- f. 2273
- Title:
- The Curatorium of the Jewish Cultural Self Government in Tartu
- Title (official language):
- Eesti Vabariigi Juudi Vähemusrahvuse Kultuuromavalitsuse Tartu Kultuurhoolekogu
- Creator/accumulator:
- Curatorium of the Jewish Cultural Self Government in Tartu
- Date(s):
- 1926/1940
- Language:
- Estonian
- Yiddish
- Russian
- Extent:
- 21 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The collection of the Curatorium (board of trustees) of the Jewish Cultural Self-Government in Tartu includes a wide range of documents that cover the various Jewish communal activities between 1926 and 1940.
Some files contain data on the Curatorium's activities, including protocols of its meetings and lists of its members; data on elections to the Curatorium, including lists of voters and candidates; and correspondence with Jewish organisations (predominantly with the Self-Government organisations in Tallinn) and with governmental institutions including the Ministry of Education and the Statistical Bureau of Estonia. The files also include financial data: lists of income and expenditure, monetary reports and other documents.
Several files refer to Jewish educational institutions in Tartu – the local Jewish school and kindergarten –including correspondence on financial, educational and organisational matters. Other files contain lists of the Curatorium's members and lists and personal data on the Jewish residents of Tartu, including records of a census held in 1940.
The collection also includes several protocols of the all-Estonian meetings of the Jewish Cultural Committee (the Kultur-Rat).
- Archival history:
- Along with other Jewish-related materials, the papers of the Curatorium were transferred to the Central Archive of the Estonian SSR in Tallinn (known from 1948 until the end of Soviet rule as the Central State Archive of the October Revolution and Social Development of the Estonian SSR, abbreviated to ORKA or TsGAOR ESSR), predecessor of the current Estonian State Archive.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Jewish cultural autonomy in Estonia was established in 1926, according to the Cultural Autonomy Act, which passed in the Estonian parliament in 1925. Even though the central Jewish Cultural Committee (the Kultur-Rat) was located in Tallinn, Tartu maintained local institutions of self-government headed by a local Curatorium analogous to other Jewish communities of Estonia. The Curatorium supervised various local community activities, most importantly the Jewish educational system. After Soviet occupation in 1940, the institutions of Jewish autonomy in Tartu were dissolved, sharing the fate of the system of Jewish cultural self-government in Estonia as a whole.
- Access points: locations:
- Tartu
- System of arrangement:
- The collection consists of two inventories arranged according to thematic order.
- Access, restrictions:
- The collection is open for reference at the ERA in Tallinn (in certain cases, online access might be available).
- Finding aids:
- Basic information and inventories in Estonian and Russian are available at the National Archives of Estonia (online access is available). An inventory in Russian is available at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
- Author of the description:
- Alex Valdman, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, 2014
