Anti-Jewish Agitation Closes Polish Universities

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Tuesday 24th November 1936


All the state controlled higher education institutions in Warsaw were shut because of an outbreak of anti-Semitic agitation that had begun in the city of Vilna. There, 1,200  students of the Stefan Batory University had launched a hunger strike in protest at the  rejection by the University authorities of a number of demands including the segregation of Jewish students and a restriction in their number. This was accompanies by rioting in which a number of police were injured.


The unrest in Warsaw had focused on the occupation by 400 law students of the main building of the Pilsudski University in support of demands similar to those made in Vilna. There were also street demonstrations. Segregation of Jewish students had begun at Lvov Polytechnic in 1935 and was eventually to become widespread through the use of so-called ghetto-benches.

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