British ORT - The First 70 Years

1920s - The beginning

British ORT was established in 1921 by Russian Émigrés fleeing the Socialist Revolution in Russia. As the lucky ones, they aimed to continue their support for their brethren left in Russia by fund-raising on behalf o f ORT, which was, by this point, a well-established provider of vocational and skills education to poor communities in what became the Soviet Union.

British ORT was the first such fundraising body to be established, and would be followed in time by ORT organisation South America, in France and in the United States. 

1930s - Einstein and the Leeds ORT boys

By 1930, British ORT was sufficiently well-established to draw big names and even bigger speakers to its fundraising events, including its annual dinner.

In October 28 1930, George Bernard Shaw, himself a writer of considerable fame, introduced Albert Einstein as the main speaker at British ORT’s annual dinner, hosted by Lord Rothschild   and held at the Savoy Hotel in London. Einstein, ‘maker of universes’ as Shaw introduced him, speaking in German, used the address to unveil a new theory, on which he had been working, the theory of relativity.



With conditions worsening in Europe following the rise of the Nazis, British ORT diversified its work from purely fund-raising to a more active role. 

In 1937, ORT opened a school in Berlin, under the leadership of Dr. Werner Simon. Permission was given by the Nazi authorities for the school to open on the basis that it would train only Jews who were planning to emigrate. From the start, British ORT cooperated closely with ORT Berlin to secure the school’s future. Aware of the increasingly precarious situation of the Jews in Germany, it was decided that all machinery and tools bought for the school would be purchased under the name of British ORT, so that to confiscate them would be to seize the goods of a foreign country, in itself a declaration of war. The tactic worked. Under the protection of British ORT, the school survived Kristalnacht and the November 1938 pogrom, remaining the only institution unaffected by the spiralling trouble and taking in students deprived of employment in their traditional sectors and young people denied an education elsewhere. By July 1938, 215 students were studying at the school.

With the situation deteriorating, Dr. Simon and Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Levey, his British counterpart, began to explore the options for relocating the school to the UK. The British Ministry for Labour and the Home Office agreed to relocate the school to Leeds, on the condition that it brought all its (British-owned) equipment with it. At the final minute, however, permission to remove the equipment was denied by the Nazis. Colonel Levy moved heaven and earth to secure the permits for the boys to leave anyway, and, on 29 August 1939, 104 boys, seven teachers and their spouses left Charlottesburg Station in Berlin. Warner Simon remained behind, aiming to travel out with the second group of students, who were due to leave on 3 September 1939. On 1 September 1939 war was declared. The second group of students never made it out of Berlin.

On 23 October 1944 Dr. Werner Simon and his wife were transported to Auschwitz and killed.

After a number of months in a Kitchener Camp in Southern England, the Leeds ORT Boys, as they became known, moved up to the newly opened school in Leeds. Here, they continued the training that had been disrupted in Berlin. The school taught locksmithery, blacksmithery, plumbing, electronics, mechanics and welding. The school ran to strict schedules and Colonel Levey, who continued to play a prominent role and visited frequently, imposed a military discipline on the students. Eager that the school should not attract adverse local attention, the boys were forbidden from speaking German in the streets ‘or at all, if possible.’ On completion of their training, many were interned as enemy aliens, but others went on to serve in the British armed forces, and fought with them in the later stages of the war.

On 18 July 2010, British ORT brought together the eight remaining Leeds Old Boys and their families for a special anniversary reunion marking the 70th anniversary of the opening of the ORT Leeds School.

1940s - The training of holocaust survivors

With ORT playing a leading role in training thousands of holocaust survivors in Displaced Persons camps following the war, British ORT’s fundraising activities took on a new importance in the late 1940s.