Kolonja Izaaka Links and Resources

Useful Organizational Links:

Jewish Colonization Association (ICA-Israel) (Baron de Hirsh's organization continues to fund training and agricultural projects in Israel)

Yad Vashem Testimony Database

Bagnowka Tours (headed by Tomasz Wisniewski, specializing in the Bialystok/Grodno region)

Other Bibliographical References:

Aviel, Avraham, A Village Called Dowgalishok (Vallentine Mitchell, 2006). This book in part describes daily life in a Jewish farming village in the Eastern Poland-Belarus region.

Boonin, Harry, Jewish Agricultural Colonies in Russia, reprinted in Shtetlinks from the Newsletter of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles (Spring 1992).

Dekel-Chen, Jonathan, Farming the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924-1941 (Yale University Press, 2005). This book examines the movement to establish Jewish farming settlements in the Crimean peninsula between the World Wars in an unusual collaboration between the Soviet government and foreign Jewish philanthropists.

Grodno Gubernia Map

Le Baron Maurice de Hirsch et La Jewish Colonization Association, a l'occasion du Centenaire de la Naissance du Baron de Hirsch (JCA, 1931). On microfilm in YIVO archives, New York.

Norman, Theodore, An Outstretched Arm: A History of the Jewish Colonization Association (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985). Cited in Dekel-Chen, above.

Pinkas Hakehillot Polin (Encylopaedia of Jewish Communities, Poland, Vol. VIII, Jerusalem 2005). See in particular entries on Kolonja Izaaka and Odelsk.

Pinkas Krynki (Tel Aviv, 1970). The memorial book of neighboring Krynki gives important background about the Jewish history of the region.

Salit, Salomon, Kolonja Izaaka: Wies Powiatu Sokolskiego (Warsaw, 1934).

Sefer Sokolka (Jerusalem, 1968). The memorial book of Sokolka contains two short memoirs of life in Kolonja Izaaka, one by Sarah Chinsky and one by Menuchah Shmilovitz, two sisters from the Ekshteyn family that left the colony in the 1930s.

Selsko—Khazaistvenny Kalendar Dlya Yevreyev Kolonistov (ii. 231, Wilna, 1902). Cited in The Jewish Encyclopedia, Grodno entry.

Tapuach, Shimshon, "Agrikultur bay Yidn in Poyln Tzvishn Beyde Velt-Milkhomes," in Studies on Polish Jewry 1919-1939, J. Fishman, ed. (YIVO 1976).

Wisniewski, Tomasz, Jewish Bialystok and Surroundings in Eastern Poland (Ipswich Press, 1998).