The Katowice Conference was a convention of Hovevei Zion groups from various countries held in Kattowitz, Germany in November, 1884. It was assembled to address the need of a Jewish state and to develop a plan for the creation of a Jewish state. The original date for the conference was chosen to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Moses Montefiore.
Participants of Katowice Conference
Photo believed to show the victims, mostly Jewish children, of a 1905 pogrom in Yekaterinoslav (today's Dnipro).
Invitation to Katowice Conference
The Lovers of Zion, also Hovevei Zion or Hibbat Zion, were a variety of proto-Zionist organizations founded in 1881 in response to the Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire and were officially constituted as a group at a conference led by Leon Pinsker in 1884.
Participants of Katowice Conference, 1884. In the center of the front row are Rabbi Samuel Mohilever and Leon Pinsker.
The first general assembly of the Odessa Committee, 1890