The International Jewish Labor Bund was a New York-based international Jewish socialist organization, based on the legacy of the General Jewish Labour Bund founded in the Russian empire in 1897 and the Polish Bund that was active in the interwar years. The IJLB is composed by local Bundist groups around the world. It was an "associated organisation" of the Socialist International, similar in status to the World Labour Zionist Movement or the International League of Religious Socialists. The World Coordinating Council/Committee of the Jewish Labor Bund was dissolved in New York in the mid-2000s. although local Bundist groups or groups inspired by the Jewish Labor Bund still exist in France, the UK, and most notably Australia.
History
Before World War Two, the Bund contributed heavily to the modernization of Jewish life as well as promoting the idea that Jews were not bound to a territory and instead were connected through history, language and culture. Many historians believe that this original Bund was lost to the effects of the holocaust in Poland, the demise of the Jewish Working Class and therefore the demise of the Yiddish infrastructure. However it was slowly reestablished by Bundists who escaped and survived World War Two as the International Jewish Labor Bund. They reconstituted the Bund in order to carry on fighting for the basic Bund principle that the Jewish problems can only be solved in places where Jews actively live through a democratic socialism that brings together Jews and non Jews. They established a World Coordinating Committee with the executives in New York City and the Secretariat in Paris. This committee perpetuates a worldwide victory over democracy and socialism wherever Jewish communities exist.
The International Jewish Labor Bund (IJLB) was admitted with an observer statute on the June 1947 Zürich Conference of the reconstituted Socialist International and as an "associated organization" at the Frankfurt founding Congress of the new Socialist International in 1951.
After 1947, Bund organizations were developed in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, England, Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Batyam, Bar Sheva, Natanya, Tiberius, Migdal-Ashkelon, Kfar Yavne, Ramat-Hasharon, Kiryat-gat, Lubl-Ramle, Melbourne, Sydney, Johannesburg, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Mexico City, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Miami, and Paterson.
In 1997 commemorative events were organized to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Bund in New York City, London, Warsaw, Paris and Brussels, where the chairwoman of the Belgian chapter, herself 100 years old, was present.
Summary of ideology
In 1958, the Jewish Labor Bund released a pamphlet commemorating the organization's 60th birthday. In it, the Bund summed up its ideology in seven points.