Metadata: The Jewish Society IKOPO
Collection
- Country:
- Lithuania
- Holding institution:
- Central State Archives of Lithuania
- Holding institution (official language):
- Lietuvos centrinis valstybės archyvas
- Postal address:
- O. Milašiaus 21, LT-10102, Vilnius
- Phone number:
- (8 5) 247 7830
- Web address:
- http://www.archyvai.lt/lt/lcva.html
- Email:
- lcva@archyvai.lt
- Reference number:
- f. 347
- Title:
- The Jewish Society IKOPO
- Title (official language):
- Žydų draugija IKOPO
- Creator/accumulator:
- IKOPO
- Date(s):
- 1918/1940
- Language:
- Lithuanian
- Yiddish
- Hebrew
- German
- English
- French
- Polish
- Russian
- Extent:
- 681 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
IKOPO, the Vilnius branch of EKOPO (Evreiskii Komitet Pomoshchi Zhertvam Voiny or Jewish Committee for the Relief of War Victims), was among the most prominent Jewish organizations in interwar Vilnius.
The archival collection of IKOPO includes a variety of materials representing the different directions of its activity: account books and other administrative papers, including protocols from the meetings of IKOPO's general assembly and its control commission meetings; circulars from the society's governing board; applications for membership of IKOPO and lists of the society's members; data on the periodical Unzer Hilf, issued by the IKOPO; correspondence with foreign Jewish organizations such as JDC, AIU, JCA, OZE and HIAS; and Jewish organisations in Poland: schools, loan funds, orphanages, relief societies and other organisations.
The main part of the collection comprises materials on IKOPO's relief activities: data – including lists of names – on recipients of financial aid (for example loans and assistance for students); data on aid provided to communities hit by natural disasters (for instance, papers on a 1930 flood in the town of Disna include the protocol from the local citizens’ meeting and correspondence between IKOPO and the local Jewish community and potential private donors); and statutes, protocol books and account books of loan funds and other relief organisations from various localities in Poland. Of considerable interest are questionnaires concerning social and financial matters that were dispersed among the Jewish residents of various localities in the vicinity of Vilnius from 1937-40.
Another substantial part of the collection includes data on IKOPO's engagements in the field of Jewish education: data on the construction of schools in various communities in the area of Vilnius; data on youth summer camps organised with IKOPO’s participation, including participant lists and photographs; information from local branches of IKOPO on the aid given to orphaned children, including statistical data and questionnaires filled out by the orphans; and correspondence with educational societies, orphanages and charity organisations.
Several files reflect IKOPO's cooperation with the Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews (ORT) and other organisations and institutions that promoted professional education among Jews. The files include lists of Jewish pupils, applications for financial support, including personal histories of young people applying for support, and other documents.
Certain files comprise materials from the period after the outbreak of World War II, after the annexation of the city and its environs to Lithuania: data on the areas of Poland under Nazi occupation and on relief activities among refugees of war, including lists of aid recipients, and reports on the relief activities of the Jewish section of the Lithuanian Red Cross in various localities of Lithuania between late 1939 and mid-1940.
- Archival history:
- The Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940 put an end to the legal activities of Jewish organizations in Vilnius (see the data on the liquidation of these organisations, including IKOPO, in Fond 401, Inventory 2, LCVA; microfilmed copies are also available in CAHJP). Exact information concerning the fate of the archives of these organisations after the Soviet takeover and during the Nazi occupation is not available. However, by 1965 the materials had been deposited at the Central State Archive of the Lithuanian SSR in Vilnius, predecessor of the modern Central State Archive of Lithuania.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
EKOPO (Evreiskii Komitet Pomoshchi Zhertvam Voiny or Jewish Committee for the Relief of War Victims) was a Jewish relief organisation founded in Russia in the wake of World War I. During the war it organized extensive relief activities among Jewish refugees and victims of war in Russia and in areas of Russian occupation. After the revolutions of 1917 in Russia, several branches of EKOPO continued their activity. They were engaged in relief activities among the Jewish casualties of the Russian civil war and took part in the restoration of Jewish communities in different parts of Eastern Europe. The branch of EKOPO for the Vilnius region was established during the first year of the war and continued its activities (with a short break in 1918-1919) until its liquidation in 1940. After the Polish takeover of Vilnius, the EKOPO branch in the city was renamed IKOPO according to the Polish spelling of its name. IKOPO was headed by such prominent members of the local Jewish community as Moshe Shalit, Tsemakh Szabad, Ya'akov. Vygodsky and Rabbi Ḥayim Ozer Grodzenski.
During the interwar period, the scope of the society's activity in Lithuania was gradually narrowed due to the establishment and development of specialised Jewish organisations in the fields of education, healthcare and immigration. One of its major fields of activity in the late 1920s and the 1930s was the organisation and supervision of Jewish interest-free loan funds, subsidised by the JDC and other organizations.
- System of arrangement:
- The collection consists of two inventories, which are arranged in chronological order.
- Access, restrictions:
- The collection is open for reference at LCVA.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories in Russian and Lithuanian are available at the Lithuanian Central State Archive (for online access see the Lithuanian archives' website). Inventories and descriptions in Hebrew are available at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People.
- Links to finding aids:
- https://eais-pub.archyvai.lt/eais/faces/pages/forms/search/F3001.jspx
- 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
