Iconic Williamsburg: The Fire on Clymer Street

YS GOLD 

This week, we focus on a fire that took place in the winter of 1982 at the Satmar Yeshiva on Clymer Street, as reported by the New York Daily News. 

5 firemen were overcome by smoke yesterday while fighting A2 alarm blaze that destroyed a Brooklyn building housing acidic school and a synagogue. The blaze sparked A bitter protest over allegedly inadequate police protection for Williamsburg’s Hasidic community.

In the Brooklyn blaze, flames erupted about 4:45 AM in the streets story united Talmudical Academy at 165 climber St. and raged out of control for three hours. Fireman climbed the ladder to the second-floor synagogue and salvaged 4 torahs.

Two firemen were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation period the other three were treated at Greenpoint Hospital and were released.

Fire officials said the cause of the blaze had not been determined. Rabbi Stein called it arson and said that several youths had been seen running from the building shortly after the fire started. 

“We've had trouble for two weeks, UN quote Stein said. He charged that police had refused request for better protection. “This building was the home of 200 rabbinical students,” Stein said. “It was a fine school. Its loss is a very hard blow to the Hasidic community, but a blow that the community will absorb and overcome.” 

No one was in the building at the time of the blaze, which fire marshals and arson squad detectives are investigating.

Hundreds of Hassidim packed the auditorium of PS16 at 157 Wilson St. Last night to hear community leaders decry cutbacks and police in the area.

The previously scheduled meeting of Shmira, a neighborhood volunteer patrol organization, turned into a forum to protest what leaders said was an upsurge of burglaries and vandalism in Williamsburg, with yesterday's fire as the focal point. 

"If the fact that a synagogue was burned does not bring back all the memories that had best be forgot," a keynote speaker Rabbi Chaim Stauber said, "then nothing will."

"The Hasidic community feels that the community is not safe unless it sees its own protection," he said. "We don't want to fight with the administration balancing its books on our backs."