Figure 1.--This is Janusz as a boy in Poland.
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Figure 1.--This is Janusz as a boy in Poland. |
Dr. Korczak, ran an orphanage in Warsaw for poor Jewish children and stayed with his Jewish orphans on the train to Treblinka, refusing all chances to rescue himself. Before the War he was a celebrated author, founding a successful children's newspaper. He was a pediatrician who hobnobbed with Warsaw's rough street urchins. He was also a Polish Army officer who scribbled tracts on child psychology at field offices under bombardment. An impish, solitary man, often abrupt or quitoic with adults, but capable of endless patience, warmth, and humor with children. He devoted his entire, celibate life to their care. At age 30 he gave up a promising medical practice to found an orphanage for poor Jewish kids (abandoned, brutalized, or orphaned) that became admired throughout Europe. Later he took a Catholic orphanage under his wing also. He trained the children in cleanliness and discipline, tenderly sat with the weeping or sick ones at night, took temperatures, told stories. Solemnly, he collected his orphans' baby teeth and built a castle from them. With instinctive empathy for their many losses--and at a time when most orphans were themselves thought of as refuse, beaten and starved in other orphanages--he insisted on each child's right to a locked drawer in which to treasure bits of string and broken junk, "memories of a lost love." He shocked everyone by his stubborn respect for the child. Other educators were outraged by his children's court, in which the orphans could sue and judge each other and their teachers. But Korczak insisted that it was only by living democratically that the children could absorb the lessons of individual rights and respect for the law. Student teachers flocked to learn from him. He would begin by taking them to a laboratory, sitting a youngster behind a X-ray machine, and exhorting the startled students. "Before you raise a hand to a child ... remember what his frightened heart looks like." At the end, old sick and exhausted, Korczak was still protective of those frightened hearts. He hobbled around the nightmarish ghetto streets to scrounge and beg for just one more crust for his orphans. And not only crusts: he tried to arrange a visit to a church garden so they could see a flower one last time. He organized concerts, Passover seders, and helped the starving children perform a Tagore play about "reconciling oneself to death."
Korczak came from a family of fairly devout Jews although Korczak himself did not consider himself at all orthodox or even an observant Jew in the usual sense. But he apparently thought of himself as a Jew culturally
Januz Korczak was a pen name. His real name
was Heinrich Goldschmidt.
Dr. Korczak, ran an orphanage in Warsaw for poor Jewish children and stayed with his Jewish orphans on the train to Treblinka, refusing all chances to rescue himself. Before the War he was a celebrated author, founding a successful children's newspaper. He was a pediatrician who hobnobbed with Warsaw's rough street urchins. At age 30 he gave up a promising medical practice to found an orphanage for poor Jewish kids (abandoned, brutalized, or orphaned) that became admired throughout Europe. Later he took a Catholic orphanage under his wing also. He trained the children in cleanliness and discipline, tenderly sat with the weeping or sick ones at night, took temperatures, told stories. Solemnly, he collected his orphans' baby teeth and built a castle from them. With instinctive empathy for their many losses--and at a time when most orphans were themselves thought of as refuse, beaten and starved in other orphanages--he insisted on each child's right to a locked drawer in which to treasure bits of string and broken junk, "memories of a lost love."
The orphans lived at a famous orphanage in Warsaw called Dom Sierot. It was located on Krochmalna Street, number 92. The home was originally built in 1912 and planned by an architect named Henryk Stifelman in consultation with Janusz Korczak, the saintly Polish physician and pediatrician who eventually perished with the orphan children over whom he presided at the extermination camp in Treblinka (5 August 1942). Before World War II Korczak actually lived in Dom Sierot orphanage with the 200 orphan children whom he tended. Korczak had a room in the attic of the building. The structure was bombed during the war and the orphans had to move to a new location on Chlodna Street in Warsaw. After this they moved once again to a third building at Sienna 16/Sliska 9. This was in the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw and it was from this building that the children were transported to the death camp at Treblinka, Korczak voluntarily accompanying them on their doomed journey.
Figure 2.--A historical photograph of some mainly secondary-school age orphans from Dom Sierot, an orphange in Warsaw where Dr. Korczak worked at an earlier period. Their teacher (Aryech Buchner) appears in the back row. The photograph is dated 1930. |
One image from the orphanage shows the boys with mainly shaved heads and wear a variety of clothes, some with what appear to be very long knee pants (they come well below the knee--or are they a kind of shortened long pants like modern clam-diggers?); others wear shorts with knee socks, and still others wear shorts with long stockings. The photograph here was taken long before World War II at Dom Sierot in 1930 (figure 2). It shows a group of orphan boys of about 12 to 16 years old with their teacher, Aryech Buchner. Note that many of them have shaved heads or very short haircuts, apparently a precaution against lice and other infestations. The boys wear various kinds of clothes but all are dressed quite informally with open collars and no neckties. This is probably a reflection of poverty since school children in Poland were usually dressed quite formally. Only the teacher in the back row wears a bow tie and suit. The boys wear either knee socks or long stockings. A few seem to be wearing unusually long knee pants that cover their knees in the sitting position and come down almost to the upper calf. One boy has bare knees and knee socks. Two of the boys in the front row wear short pants (or perhaps shortish knee pants) with tan or light grey long stockings. All the boys are wearing hightop boots. The orphans depended to some extent on donated or second-hand clothing. The longish knee pants, which seem too long for some of the boys, may be a reflection of the
need to wear clothing too large to fit properly. Or perhaps it was an
alternative style to short pants with long stockings.
He was also a Polish Army officer who scribbled tracts on child psychology at field offices under bombardment. An impish, solitary man, often abrupt or quitoic with adults, but capable of endless patience, warmth, and humor with children. He devoted his entire, celibate life to their care. He shocked everyone by his stubborn respect for the child. Other educators were outraged by his children's court, in which the orphans could sue and judge each other and their teachers. But Korczak insisted that it was only by living democratically that the children could absorb the lessons of individual rights and respect for the law. Student teachers flocked to learn from him. He would begin by taking them to a laboratory, sitting a youngster behind a X-ray machine, and exhorting the startled students. "Before you raise a hand to a child ... remember what his frightened heart looks like."
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 children like other Polish Jews were forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. As was Korczak because of his ethnicity. After relocation to the Warsaw Ghetto he went with to continue caring for them. He was not required by the NAZIs to do so. At the end, old sick and exhausted, Korczak was still protective of those frightened hearts. He hobbled around the nightmarish ghetto streets to scrounge and beg for just one more crust for his orphans. And not only crusts: he tried to arrange a visit to a church garden so they could see a flower one last time. He organized concerts, Passover seders, and helped the starving children perform a Tagore play about "reconciling oneself to death."
When the children were tranported to Treblinka in 1943 to be gassed Dr. Korczak insisted on accompaning them. He was not required to do so. The NAZIs sometimes held on to particularly well known Jews, both for propaganda purposes and for possible ransome. He died with the children in the gas chambers.
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. In the film Korczak is urged to wear the star of David sleeve band for his own protection, though he refuses to do so. It is is true that he has the opportunity to stay behind because of his celebrity as a famous doctor when the children are all sent to Treblinka, but he refuses the opportunity and insists on going to the
gas chambers with the children.
Cohen, Adir. The Gate of Light (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994).
Lifton, Betty Jean. The King of Children (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1988?).
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