Szternfinkiel family house - 24 Lubartowska Street
Kamienica rodziny Szernfinkiel - Lubartowska 24
The house at 24 (18 before WWII) Lubartowska Street belonged to the Szternfinkiel family. Writer Anna Regina Langfus (nee Szternfinkiel, 1920-1966) was born and grew up here. She received the prestigious Prix Goncourt award for her novel written in French, Les bagages de sable (literally Sand Baggage or Baggage of Sand; published in English as The Lost Shore), where she explored the subject of “war illness” and the pain of survivors trying to return to normal life after their trauma. A plaque commemorating the writer has been put up on the façade of the building, while an excerpt from her other novel, Le sel et le soufre (Salt and Sulfur), has been placed on a side wall of the house at 47 Lubartowska Street, visible from Ruska Street. The quote refers to the isolation and closure of Jews in the ghetto.The shtibel (a prayer room) of the Radzin Hasids used to function in the Szternfinkiel house from 1908, visited by around a hundred people every day in the interwar period. The building also used to house two Jewish primary schools (numbered 4 and 24), located in the yard and run by two women, Mrs Sztatman and Mrs Borawska. These were so-called Shabbat schools, whose Jewish students did not study on Shabbat, i.e. Saturday, at a time when Saturday was an ordinary school day for non-Jewish children. The Association of Jewish Academics also had its seat here. Additionally, a group of Jewish and Christian students held the founding meeting of the Polish-Jewish Committee to Combat Antisemitism in the building in 1935, in response to the antisemitic campaign mounted by the circles of the National Democracy political movement, fiercely nationalist in its character.
As seen on
Lublin. Jewish History Tours. Highlights
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