ORT and Rehabilitation
In the end of the Second World War ORT and other relief organizations were faced with an immense set of challenges. The Jewish community in Europe was all but destroyed. Those who survived- whether waiting for immigration in the DP camps or returning to the former countries, had to be provided with immediate help.
ORT in DP Camps
In November 1945, Dr. David Lvovitch,the chairman of World ORT Union, made an agreement between World ORT Union and UNRRA for vocational schools to be set up wherever possible to aid the DPs. The first school, in the large camp of Landsberg was opened already three months after the end of the war, in August 1945.
Once ORT became the recognized vocational agency for the camps machines and equipment were brought in and hundreds of instructors were recruited from among surviving ORT personnel, and DP engineers, educators and craftsmen. Classes and workshops sprouted wherever there were groups of survivors. By the end of 1945, there were 1,895 persons enrolled in ORT in Germany. Two years later, the number had swelled to 10,624.
In late 1946, programs similar to those activated in Germany were opened in Austria. Centers of two types were opened: within the camps, as in Germany, and central schools in Vienna, Salzburg and Linz, for residents in nearby camps and DPs living outside the camps. A few months later, the program was extended to Italy. Here were concentrated those planning to get to Palestine quickly. The type of services instituted was geared to preparation for such emigration. Fields were chosen with an eye to what would be useful in Palestine, for example, an agricultural training program near Turin and a center for construction workers in Milan.
By the end of 1947, ORT had become a network of over 700 courses located in the DP camps of Europe. The phenomenal number of 22,620 persons was enrolled that year, almost one-tenth of the DP population of the time. 934 teachers taught more than fifty trades, including metal machining, shoemaking and carpentry -- traditional Jewish trades -- but also automobile motor repairing, dental mechanics, millinery designing, typesetting, goldsmithing, watch repairing and such relatively complex fields as optics and surveying.
The vocational schools were not only equipping students with new skills but also with confidence to imagine a future in which they could use it. On completion of any ORT course the students received a certificate which would prove to be a valuable document for those seeing to emigrate. Discussing the role played by the vocational courses in the life of the DP community, Samuel Gringauz, President of the Congress of Liberated Jews in the U.S. Zone, explained : ‘The importance of these schools is not explained by the fact that they supplied valuable vocational training to thousands of uprooted people. The importance of the school centers in the fact that they gave a valuable ideology to thousands of young people; that they helped thousands of young people in a heroic self-assertion; that they created the spirit admired by the whole world at the attitude at the DP’s on the Exodus; that they inspired an ideology which will become the foundation of the national rebirth of the Jewish people.' [1]
[1] Samuel Gringauz, ' The only bright rays in the gloomy existence of the D.P.’s' ORT Bulletin no.2 (March, 1948) p.3