On 22 August 1863, Jozef Lajb Ab, a well-known Lodz teacher and educational activist, was born in Lodz to the family of Leon (Lewin) and Szprynca née Codik.

One of the most important challenges facing the society of Poland entering modernity was its literacy and schooling. The problem also affected the Jewish population, although the number of people unable to write and read at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was much smaller in this group than in the Polish population.

Józef Lajb Ab began his teaching career in 1885. He was active in Jewish teachers’ associations and in the Committee for Combating Illiteracy, and after the First World War, he was chairman of the Association of Jewish Secondary School Owners. Thanks to the efforts of the aforementioned Committee, from 1907, Jewish illiterate adults were able to attend free evening courses organised at the elementary schools in Zawadzka and Cegielniana Streets.

J. L. Ab’s greatest achievement was the establishment of the 7-grade Female Trade School in 1910, which was first located in today’s Kościuszko Street, then in today’s Narutowicz Street, and in 1913 was moved to the building in Zielona Street. In the interwar period, the school was transformed into a gymnasium and secondary school. in 1931, when J. L. Ab resigned as headmaster, the school was named after him. However, cooperation with the parents did not always go well, the main cause of conflict was the amount of school fees. Teaching at the school was led in Polish from the beginning, with Hebrew as an additional subject.

J. L. Ab was married to Berta, a dentist. They had two children. During the Second World War J. L. Ab was sent to the ghetto, where he died on 7 February 1941. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery on Bracka Street in Łódź.