College of the Sages - Yeshiva Chachmej Lublin

High School of the Sages - Yeshiva Chachmej Lublin

At the first world congress of the Orthodox ‚Agudath Israel World Organization‘ (AIWO) in Vienna on August 16, 1923, the prominent Polish Hasidic rabbi Meir Shapiro (Majer Jehuda Szapira) presented his basic idea, developed long before, of founding a modern Talmudic high school. The suggestion was taken up by the Congress and Lublin was chosen as the site because of its long tradition of rabbinical seminaries (foundation stone laid in 1924). The College of the Sages (Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin) was opened in 1930. Its history as a Talmudic school ended abruptly in 1939 with the occupation of Poland by the German Nazi Wehrmacht. In 1940 the Nazis confiscated the library with its invaluable collection of 13,000 books and closed the synagogue. Most of the books ended up on the funeral pyre. Others were taken as booty to the ‚Reich‘.

Although the Talmud school stood on the site of the established Jewish ghetto, the Wehrmacht desecrated it by using the Räumlichkeiten as a war hospital. In 1945, the medical faculty of the Maria Curie Skłodowska University used the building and the former synagogue as an auditorium. Only after the change of system in Poland in 1989, the Jewish community received back the former Talmudic high school in 2004. From the Hörsaal became as once a synagogue.

Über the history of the house and the Jews in Lublin informs a small museum right next to the synagogue room. The College of the Wise also houses a hotel.

Timeline

1924 - Design of the building by Agenor Smoluchowski

May 22, 1924 - Laying of the foundation stone

21. June 1930 - opening of the Rabbinical College

1940 -1944 - misappropriation as German war hospital

1945 - Übgabe des Gebäude to the Medical Faculty of the Maria Curie Skłodowska University

2004 - Rück transfer of the building to the Jüdische Gemeinde Warsschau