Synagogue at famed Polish yeshiva opens in emotional celebration

[struggle4progress]

The Associated Press
Published: February 11, 2007

LUBLIN, Poland: ... Before World War II, Lublin was home to a large Jewish population that made up about 40 percent of the overall population of 100,000. The city was sometimes called the Jewish Oxford and the Polish Jerusalem because of its long tradition of learning.

The Chachmei yeshiva was opened in 1930 by a renowned rabbi of the time, Meir Shapiro. It operated until the 1939 invasion of Nazi Germany at the start of World War II as a place where young Orthodox men pursued intensive studies of the Talmud, the collection of writings making up Jewish law.

When the Nazis took over Lublin, they stripped the interior and burned the vast library in the town square. After the war, it was used by a medical academy, but was returned to the Jewish community in 2004.

Many of its former students were killed in the nearby Majdanek death camp, as well as other camps that the Nazis set up across occupied Poland ...

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/12/europe/EU-GEN-Poland-Jewish-Revival.php