Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Poland University Restores 262 PhD’s Stripped by Nazis

A Polish university will symbolically reinstate 262 doctorates, most of Jewish academics, annulled by the Nazis almost eight decades ago.

The University of Wroclaw, in the Polish city of the same name, announced Monday that it will restore the degrees at a ceremony on Jan. 22.

The announcement is somewhat complicated by the fact that the degrees were issued by a university which no longer exists, the French news agency AFP reported.

The city and the university had previously been known under the German name of Breslau while under German rule. After World War II ended in 1945, the city became a part of Poland, and the university dissolved. Its students and teachers became a part of the German University of Cologne, while the university campus was reorganized as the University of Wroclaw.

“It’s a symbolic gesture,” University of Wroclaw spokesman Jacek Przygodzki told AFP.

During the Nazi regime, universities regularly stripped degrees and titles from Jews and other scholars seen as hostile to the Nazis, and the then-University of Breslau stood at the forefront of this dubious practice.

“By the standards of Germany, Wroclaw University was at the forefront when it came to withdrawing titles: its senate was extremely zealous,” German historian Kai Kranich said, according to The Telegraph, citing the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.