Ghetto benches
form of official segregation in the seating of students
Ghetto benches (known in Polish as getto ławkowe) was a form of official segregation in the seating of university students, introduced in 1935 at the Lwów Polytechnic. Rectors at other higher education institutions in the Second Polish Republic had adopted this form of segregation when the practice became conditionally legalized by 1937. Under the ghetto ławkowe system, Jewish university students were required under threat of expulsion to sit in a left-hand side section of the lecture halls reserved exclusively for them. This official policy of enforced segregation was often accompanied by acts of violence directed against Jewish students by members of the ONR (outlawed after three months in 1934).
The seating in benches marked a peak of antisemitism in Poland between the world wars according to Jerzy Jan Lerski. It antagonized not only Jews, but also many Poles. Jewish students protested these policies, along with some Poles who supported them by standing instead of sitting. The segregation continued until the invasion of Poland in World War II. Poland's occupation by Nazi Germany suppressed the entire Polish educational system. In the eastern half of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, such discriminatory policies in education were lifted.
Background
The percentage of Poland's Jewish population increased greatly during the Russian Civil War.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2385543. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1935, 1937 and 1934.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ghetto benches” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.