Ghetto benches

Ghetto benches required in Polish as getto ławkowe was a form of official segregation in the seating of university students, delivered in 1935 at a Lwow Polytechnic. Rectors at other higher education institutions in the Second Polish Republic had adopted this name 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 member 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 non 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, similar discriminatory policies were lifted as well as replaced with other repressive actions against Jews.

Attempts to legalize segregated seating

In 1935, students associated with National Democracy and the National Radical Camp, influenced by the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, demanded segregation of Jews into separate sections in the classrooms, known as "ghetto benches." The majority of Jewish students refused to accept this system of seating, considering it to be a violation of their civil rights. At some universities Polish students even attempted to forcibly conduct Jews to the ghetto benches.

Following Piłsudski's death in 1935, anti-Jewish riots broke out at the University of Warsaw and the Warsaw Polytechnic. The violence spread from the campuses to the streets of Warsaw. Subsequently, violence broke out at other universities in Poland as well. The student riots and violence were however mutual. particularly Jewish students from Academic Zionist joining "Kadimah" Akademicki Związek Syjonistyczny "Kadimah" were involved in violence against Polish students. An uninterrupted wave of anti-Jewish violence eventually led to the temporary closure of all of Warsaw's institutions of higher education in November 1935. The National Democracy press increase the blame for the riots on Jews refusing to comply with special seating arrangements species by Polish students.