Dokumenty politicheskogo, ekonomicheskogo i voennogo kharaktera uchrezhdenii i organizatsii Frantsii, Bel'gii, i dr stran (kollektsiia)

The collection constitutes an accumulation of documents of various institutions and organizations, often of undetermined collection provenance, compiled at the Central State Special Archive. These are documents of a political, economic, and military nature of various institutions and organizations in France, Belgium, and other countries. The collection includes materials on history, philosophy, politics, and economics, as well as information on the armed forces, police, intelligence activities, political Parties and organizations in various countries. The collection's contents are described in ten inventories, in which materials are catalogued by subject. The collection includes reports of the executive committee of the central board of the vocational training society ORT for 1935-36. Many documents deal with the problem of Jewish refugees and emigration in the 1930s: a report by a representative of the Jewish Colonization Association on prospects for Jewish colonization in Paraguay, presented to the JCA general directorate on 24 May 1934; the text of an appeal by the Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe to participants of the international Evian Conference (1938); a report by the central directorate of the OZE presented to the intergovernmental Evian conference on the refugee problem (30 June 1938); a report by the Committee to Aid Jewish Refugees covering the period 20 July 1936-30 June 1938; and minutes of May 1939 meetings of the coordinating commissions of the Committee to Aid Jewish Refugees. The collection also contains materials on British-Zionist relations, and on the Yishuv in Palestine: minutes of a session, and the text of a speech by Chaim Weizmann, at a conference (28 December 1920) on the political situation in Palestine; a memorandum (5 June 1939) on legal aspects of a declaration by the British Mandate authorities in Palestine; an addendum to a letter from Weizmann to the High Commissioner of the Permanent Mandate Commission (31 May 1939); circulars of the British passport service to foreign sections on restrictions on the import and export of goods to Palestine; on annulling invalid and false passports, in particular the passports of Jews stripped of Palestinian citizenship, including for illegal receipt of Palestinian passports; and on restrictions on the right for organizers of illegal Jewish immigration to enter Palestine (1937-40); handwritten notes (undated) on the problems of urban and agricultural water supply in Mandate Palestine; the text portion of a film strip on the Palestinian Yishuv (1939); and informational bulletins on the Mikveh Israel Agricultural School (1932), on Bet Hakan, the first agricultural colony of Bulgarian Sephardim in Palestine (1934), on Kibbutz Degania (1935), and on the Givat Brenner colony (1935). The collection contains documents on the condition of Jews in Nazi Germany: documents of the international conference (30 November-1 December 1935, Paris) on Nazi legislation of the Third Reich; a systematic selection of documents on the legal position of Jews in Germany in 1933-35: fragments of discriminatory legislation, of public speeches by German government figures and leaders of the Nazi party, and of publications in the Nazi press on the need to force Jews out of the systems of higher education, medicine, and the law, on the unacceptability of "educational camps" for returning Jewish émigrés, on the boycott of Jewish shops, and on alleged ritual murders; protests by American, French, and British church leaders (1933); a draft appeal on non-recognition of the discriminatory laws passed by the Reichstag in Nuremburg on 15 September 1935; a report by representatives of the Jewish community of Danzig at a HICEM-sponsored conference of Jewish émigré aid organizations (22 August 1939); a memorandum delivered at the same conference by a community of Turkish Jews living in Germany (about 150 families) on problems connected with recognition of their Turkish citizenship and on being granted the possibility of repatriation to Turkey; an English translation of an anonymous letter to the newspaper Das Neue Tage-Buch from 18 November 1938 (the author of the letter had been imprisoned for six weeks in the Buchenwald concentration camp; the system of the camp's functioning and conditions in which prisoners were held are described for the period from mid-June to the end of August 1938); and excerpts from publications in the Jewish press during the years 1933-35 condemning Nazi Germany's discriminatory policy toward Jews. The collection has materials on the legal status of Jews in France before and during World War II: a letter from the Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe to French prime minister Edouard Daladier, to the ministers of the Interior, Justice, and Finance, and to the prefect of the police on the unjustified tightening of procedures (by decree of 2 May 1938) for granting temporary residence in France to foreigners and, particularly, to Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria, Poland, and Romania, and on needlessly harsh measures (arrests and deportations) against the refugees; and a copy of a query (14 August 1941) from the French State Secretariat for Public Education's directorate of technical education to the Commissioner for Jewish Affairs on removing Jews from educational institutions' public administrative councils. There are articles (for the most part typewritten) from 1938-39 on the situation of Jews in Czechoslovakia. The collection holds the texts of various speeches, articles and printed materials from the time of the Second World War: a Paris speech given by General Władysław Sikorski at the opening of the National Council of the Polish Republic in Paris (23 May 1940) entitled "Pro-Hitler and Anti-Semitic Policy as Factors in the Defeat of Poland"; an article on the persecution of Jews in German-occupied Polish territory (no earlier than March 1940); detailed reports on the situation of Jews in Lodi and concerning the Lublin "Reservation"; issue no. 5 (20 February 1940) of the informational bulletin Dekada Polska of the Paris-based Center for Information and Documentation of the Polish Republic, presenting materials on the persecution of Jews in the German-occupied territories of Poland; and the 1940 articles "The Situation of the Jews in Lodi," "The Situation of the Jews in Poland," and "The Situation of the Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia." The collection contains some materials on the Dreyfus Affair: articles by Alfred Dreyfus's son, Pierre, published in the London Daily Telegraph from 24 August to early September 1936, letters from various correspondents and readers in response to Pierre's articles, and reminiscences of the trial of Alfred Dreyfus. There is also a selection of articles from Swiss and French newspapers (including Russian-language émigré newspapers) for the period 28 October-10 November 1934 on the public trial in Berne against Theodor Fischer, leader of the Swiss section of the National Socialist Party, and members of the National Front, who were sued by the Union of Jewish Communities of Switzerland for publishing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.