Ghetto benches (known in Polish as getto ławkowe)[1][2] was a form of official segregation in the seating of university students, introduced in 1935 at the Lwów Polytechnic.

[4] 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).

Following Poland's return to independence, several hundred thousand Jews joined the already numerous Polish Jewish minority living predominantly in the cities.

[14] Proposals to reinstitute the numerus clausus, which would restrict Jewish enrollment to 10 percent of the student body (roughly the percentage of Jews living in Poland), were made as early as 1923.

[18] The situation of Jews improved under Józef Piłsudski,[15][19] but after his death in 1935 the National Democrats regained much of their power and the status of Jewish students deteriorated.

A student "Green Ribbon" League was organized in 1931; its members distributed anti-semitic material and called for the boycott of Jewish businesses and the enforcement of the numerus clausus.

[25] 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 put the blame for the riots on Jews refusing to comply with special seating arrangements set by Polish students.

[22] While the Polish government initially opposed the segregation policies, the universities enjoyed significant level of autonomy and were able to impose their local regulations.

[11] The ethno-nationalists finally won their campaign for ghetto benches in 1937 when by Ministry decision universities were granted the right to regulate the seating of Polish and Jewish students.

[27] Over 50 notable Polish professors (including Marceli Handelsman, Stanisław Ossowski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, and Manfred Kridl) criticized the introduction of the ghetto benches,[11] and refused to enforce either a quota, or the ghetto bench system, but their voices were ignored together with those gentile students who objected to the policy;[28] they would protest by standing in class, and refusing to sit down.

[6] Rector Władysław Marian Jakowicki of the Stefan Batory University in Wilno (Vilnius) resigned from his position in protest of the introduction of the benches.

[27] The only faculty in Poland that did not have ghetto benches introduced was that of the Children's Clinic in the Piłsudski University of Warsaw led by Professor Mieczysław Michałowicz, who refused to obey the Rector's order.