Metadata: Committee to Aid Victims of the Pogrom of 18-21 October 1905
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- State Archive of the Kyiv Region
- Holding institution (official language):
- Державний архів Київської області
- Postal address:
- 04119, м.Київ, вул.Мельникова, 38, 40.
- Phone number:
- 380 (44)206-74-99
- Web address:
- http://dako.gov.ua/
- Email:
- dako@archives.kiev.ua
- Reference number:
- F. 442
- Title:
- Committee to Aid Victims of the Pogrom of 18-21 October 1905
- Title (official language):
- Комитет по оказанию помощи пострадавшим от погрома 18-21 октября 1905 г.
- Creator/accumulator:
- Committee to Aid Victims of the Pogrom of 18-21 October 1905
- Date(s):
- 1905/1912
- Language:
- Russian
- English
- Yiddish
- German
- French
- Extent:
- 65 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Included are minutes of committee sessions in which the fundamental positions and forms of its operations were established, duties apportioned among committee members, and sources of financing researched; a report by committee delegates who participated in the Petersburg Congress on Aid to Pogrom Victims (1906); financial reports of the committee; minutes of particular commissions’ sessions in which specific aid applications were reviewed; questionnaire forms and applications of victimised craftsmen, workers, clerks, and merchants authenticated by representatives of the committee, with material damages suffered and amounts of needed payments indicated; lists of persons and institutions that received aid; statements by committee plenipotentiaries on situations developing in other cities and towns after pogroms; proposals regarding assistance to Jewish communities and organisations in other cities; and lists of population centres to which funds were sent.
There is also correspondence of the committee’s finance commission with various banks, which contains proposals to take part in preferential financing for Jewish pogrom victims backed by the security of L. I. Brodskii, and discussion of loan terms and amounts; various persons’ requests for reduced service payments on loans issued; statements of the commission on organising low-cost meals for Kiev’s Jewish poor; letters from foreign Jewish philanthropic organisations, and correspondence on resettling orphaned minors from Kiev pogrom victims’ families abroad, and attestations by these orphans’ relatives renouncing rights and claims to them; etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Committee to Aid Victims of the Pogrom of 18-21 October 1905 was organised as part of the recovery effort after the bloody and destructive pogrom against Jews that occurred in Kiev immediately following demonstrations by leftist radicals on the occasion of the emperor’s signing of the manifesto of 17 October 1905. Immediately after the pogrom, certain Jewish philanthropists began fundraising for aid to victims and victims’ families, and on 26 October, the organising assembly of the citywide Aid Committee was held, chaired by the well-known sugar manufacturer and philanthropist Lev I. Brodskii; it included representatives from among Kiev’s major Jewish businessmen, financiers, doctors, and lawyers.
The committee had several structures: commissions to aid craftsmen and clerks, and small businessmen; financial and audit commissions; and a secretariat. The commissions reviewed questionnaire forms and applications of all victims, made determinations as to the urgent needs of victims’ families, and distributed to these persons requisite aid from funds collected by the committee. Craftsmen were also given tools and materials; and the most indigent of the Jewish population were given money to buy winter firewood, celebrate Passover, etc. Committee measures also provided for long-term preferential bank credit for small businessmen. The overall goal was to enable all victimised families’ wage-earners to renew their professional activities.
Insofar as a wave of pogroms against Jews wrought havoc in many population centres of the Pale of Settlement in the fall of 1905, aid to pogrom victims took on an all-Russian and international scale. The Committee to Aid Jewish Pogrom Victims was set up in Petersburg and provided with funds collected by Jewish charitable organisations of various European countries via the International Committee to Aid Victims of Pogroms in Russia, which had been established in Berlin. The Petersburg and Kiev committees collaborated closely, and considerable charitable funds were transferred from Petersburg to Kiev. At the same time, the Kiev committee extended operations to population centres of neighbouring provinces. Applications of local Jewish communities and organisations were reviewed by special committee plenipotentiaries, per whose reports the committee distributed aid to those in need. Most of the activity of the Committee to Aid Victims of the Pogrom of 18-21 October 1905 took place in the period from October 1905 through late 1906; but some of its structures, mainly as pertained to bank credit service, continued to function until 1912.
- Access points: locations:
- Kiev
- Petersburg
- Ukraine
- Access points: persons/families:
- Brodskii, Lev
- System of arrangement:
- The fond includes a single inventory systematised according to the structural principle.
- Finding aids:
- An inventory is available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
