“Open letter to the participants of the Anatomists’ Congress!” – A sharply worded poster exposing to the faculty ...

The poster describes the systematic exclusion of Jews from Polish universities: “Professors! Students! Did you know that in Polish universities - in the faculties of medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, polytechnics, and others, a numerus clausus is officially applied to Jews with Polish citizenship, just as it is in Hitler’s universities? Did you know that every year, hundreds of Jewish high school graduates, facing universities that do not want them, are forced to give up the studies they are passionate about or go abroad in order to pursue them… Did you know that upon returning to the countries in which they are legal citizens, they face two to three years of hardship due to the enormous difficulties involved in legalizing their foreign diplomas? Did you know that the supporter of antisemitism in Poland is the instigator of all the pogroms and antisemitic incidents at the University of Warsaw? Did you know that the slogan Professor Lot gives each year to the medical faculty in Warsaw is: “There is no place in Christianity for Jewish students”? Did you know that several years ago he readily approved of the abuse and expulsion of Jewish students from his class, and even advised his students to throw their Jewish classmates’ coats out the window into the courtyard - an act that was carried out? Did you know that at a congress of Polish doctors in Ciechocinek, Professor Lot demanded that non-Aryan doctors be isolated from the others in the hall? This is why Polish students at the ULB are addressing the Congress and asking it to pass a resolution demanding the abolition of the numerus clausus and the restoration of the right to recognize foreign diplomas in Polish universities...

Down with antisemitism!

Long live free inquiry!

Long live the Free University of Brussels!״

In the 1930s, Polish universities became one of the primary arenas of institutionalized antisemitism in interwar Europe, with the implementation of a numerus clausus policy that formally and informally restricted the number of Jewish students - particularly in the faculties of medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and engineering. Alongside these numerical restrictions, extreme forms of physical and social exclusion emerged: the introduction of “ghetto benches” for Jewish students, enforced segregation in lecture halls, denial of access to cadavers for dissection in medical faculties, daily violence, public humiliation, and at times open or tacit support from university administrations and senior professors. This policy was not a local anomaly, but part of a broader process of nationalist radicalization, within which Jews were portrayed as a foreign element threatening the “national character” of higher education. This reality came to the attention of Jewish Polish student communities residing in Western Europe, especially in Belgium - many of them academic refugees who had been forced to leave Poland due to the restrictions and violence. In response, they acted within the international public and intellectual spheres: publishing open letters and posters, addressing international scientific congresses, and attempting to enlist the moral authority of scientists and free universities, foremost among them the University of Brussels, to expose the situation, challenge the legitimacy of the discrimination, and demand the abolition of the numerus clausus and the restoration of the principles of academic freedom. These efforts did not succeed in halting the process in Poland, but they stand as an early and rare testimony to the Jewish struggle against antisemitism in academia, and to the Jewish understanding, already at the time, that exclusion from the university marked a critical stage in a broader mechanism of dispossession and expulsion from society. 

Extremely rare. We have found no bibliographic record of this poster.

[1] Leaf. 26x19 cm. Several lines highlighted in pencil. Very good condition.