Report on the ORT Activities in Bulgaria, July-November 1947

 

The attached report was submitted to the meeting to the executive of the World ORT Union in Zurich in November 1947. It focuses on the organization’s activities in Bulgaria during the summer, outside  term-time.

The report starts with a detailed description of end of the 1947/1948 school year. It shows widely attended graduation ceremonies, which  formed an important part of the social life of the Bulgarian Jewish community. The presence of the representatives of the government underlined ORT’s position in the Bulgarian educational system.

 Further on, the report deals with arrangements for the students’ summer. It describes summer camps organized  by ORT in cooperation with AJDC. The month-long camps were available free of charge to the students from the poorest backgrounds.

The final part of the report is concerned with preparations for the new school year.  It looks into preparation of teaching establishments, underlining the part played  by ORT students themselves, who participated in the building works and also in preparation of posters and models for teaching. The report also discusses creation of the syllabi, manuals and textbooks for the following year and finally  the recruitment of new pupils. Interested candidates were invited to participate in specially organized trial lessons and allowed to observe everyday life of the school.

Since the report was written only a few months after the creation of the independent state of Israel- its focus is on discussing emigration. Yet the report underlines the importance of the vocational diploma not only for those who chose to emigrate but also for those who wanted to stay in the country. For the latter group ORT cooperated with Bulgarian Jewish co-operatives, where it placed its graduates.