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Korczak is the story of the Polish educator who cared for orphaned Jewish children. The director was Andrei Waida who is probably Poland's most distinguished film director. The movie is a dramatization of the final years of the heroic Polish pediatrician and child psychologist, Dr. Janusz Korczak. He ran a Jewish orphanage. The children like other Polish Jews were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. After relocation to the Warsaw Ghetto he went with to continue caring for them. As a Christian he was not required by the NAZIs to do so. When the children were tranported to Treblinka in 1943 to be gassed Dr. Korczak insisted on accompaning them, again he was not required to do so. He died with the children in the gas chambers. We have an image from the film showing one of the older boys of the orphanage. He is an adolescent about 15 years old who falls in love with a non-Jewish girl and whom Dr. Korczak consoles by praising his incipient manhood. The costuming in the film is very accurate.
Korczak is the story of the Polish educator who cared for orphaned Jewish children. The producer is the renowned filmmaker Andej Wajda. He is probably Poland's most distinguished film director. It is filmed in stark black-and-white. It is a beautifully done dilm, although like all Holocaust films, very difficult to watch.
Poland had the largest Jewish popularion in Europe with the exception of the Soviet Union. It was in Poland that mass murder of the Jews began and was perfected. The death
camps were located in Poland not Germany. And in Poland the Germans found many willing to help them and few Poles intersted in protecting the Jews. Einsatzgruppen began killing
Polish Jews with the German invasion (September 1939). Most Polish Jews were forced into Ghettos. These ghettos were liuidated by the SS in 1942 following the Wannsee Conference: Lublin (March 1942); ghettos of Eastern and Western Poland (Spring 1942); and the Warsaw Ghetto (July-September 1942).
The movie is a dramatization of the final years of the heroic Polish pediatrician and child psychologist, Dr. Janusz Korczak. He ran a Jewish orphanage. The children like other Polish Jews were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. After relocation to the Warsaw Ghetto he went with to continue caring for them. He was not required by the NAZIs to do so. When the children were tranported to Treblinka in 1943 to be gassed Dr. Korczak insisted on accompaning with them, again he was not required to do so. He died with the children in the gas chambers.
The two major boy characters are Joseph (the teenager, about 14-15 years old) who is played by
Polish actor Wojeiech Klata. Joseph is the oldest boy in the orphanage. He is about 15 or 16. The other principal boy character is Szloma, a much younger boy (about 8 or 9), who teases Joseph about his falling in love with a non-Jewish girl. Szloma is the younger boy whom you can see in the background of both photos.
Yhe plot of the film is a fictionalized view of the last days of life of famed Polish educator Janusz Korczak and his tragic commitment to protecting Jewish orphans during the World War II NAZI occupation of Poland. The outlines of the plot are all to true, the fictionalized component is the indivisual interactions between Dr. Korczak and the children. As the NAZIs murdered the children and Dr. Korczak there is no way to document these interactions. Jewish doctor Henryk Goldszmit, better known as Janusz Korczak, was a complex man. He is best rembered today as a man of extrodinary principles who maintaine them in the face of abject evil. He was known to shout at German officers, an act that would normally mean death for a Jews in occupied Poland. He accompanies his orphans and sets up in the terribly crowded Wardaw Ghetto. There he cares for 200 homeless children.
Dr. Korczak implemented his experimental educational methods. He organized a way of life for his orohans. Part of it is a system of child self-government. This idealized system of justice provides a stark contrast to the the mosterous evil that surrounds them outside the orphanage. On the streets around the orphanage, children are starving to death. Bodies lie on the street as people walk by. The film has a number of subplots. One of the older boys of the orphanage is an adolescent about 15 years old who falls in love with a non-Jewish girl. Dr. Korczak consoles by praising his incipient manhood. The boy's name was Joseph. The Ghetto's mayor guarantees Dr. Korczak that the orphanas will be saved. Dr. Korczak manages to raise food and money from the well-to-do Jews in the orphanage. At the end, he refuses to accept a Swiss passport and boards the transport to the Treblinka transport with his orphans. He knows very well what they face. Trenlinka of course is one of the NAZI death camps where many bof the Warsaw Ghetto Jews were gassed. .
The costuming in the film is very accurate. The adolescent is wearing a white shirt, dark short pants, and dark colored (probably brown) long stockings. Although the photo is rather dark, you can see the clasp of his stocking supporter at the hem of his shorts. He may be wearing a bodice or Leibchen under his shirt. The costuming seems very realistic in depicting the children's clothing. Many children are show wearing long over-the-knee stockings. This is unusual in that films of the era usually show boys in short pants wearing kneesocks, even though long stockings were quite common. For the filming, actual long stockings were used. Sometimes in films, tights are used rather than long stockings because they are easier to obtain and wear. One scene from the film shows a teenager after a younger boy in the Warsaw ghetto orphanage has just snatched a love letter that he was writing to a non-Jewish girl who lives outside the ghetto. She has been forbidden to see him anymore because he is Jewish. The teenager, who is the most prominent boy character in the film, is Joseph. The standard dress of boys in the ghetto consists of white shirts, short pants, and long brown stockings. In the picture you can see Joseph's stocking supporter at the hem
of his shorts (figure 1). The younger boy is Szloma. He teases Joseph about his amorous involvement with a gentile girl. Szloma wears the same style of clothing except that he is shown with a jacket.
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