Janusz Korczak

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak, real name Henryk Goldszmit (July 22, 1878 or 1879 – August, 1942) was a Polish-Jewish children's author, pediatrician, and child pedagogist, known as Old Doctor (Stary Doktor). He is also the subject of the stage play Korczak's Children, by Jeffrey Hatcher.

1 Biography
2 Themes in the children's books
3 Selected writings
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Korczak was born in Warsaw in an assimilated Jewish family. His father Józef Goldszmit died in 1896, possibly by his own hand, leaving the family without a source of income. Over the next few years, the family was forced to abandon their spacious apartment and, during his teens, Korczak was the sole breadwinner for his mother, sister, and grandmother.

In 1898 he used Janusz Korczak as a writing pseudonym in Ignacy Paderewski's literary contest. The name originated from the book Janasz Korczak and the pretty Swordsweeperlady by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski. In 1890s he studied in the Flying University. In years 1898–1904 Korczak studied medicine in Warsaw and also wrote for several Polish language newspapers.

After his graduation he became a pediatrician. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1905–1906 he served as a military doctor. Meanwhile his book Child of the Drawing Room gained him some literary recognition. After the war he continued his practice in Warsaw.

The Krochmalna Street orphanage where Korczak worked. He lived in a room in the attic

Korczak's orphanage is still in operation today

In years 1907–1908 Korczak continued his studies in Berlin. When he was working for Orphan's Society in 1909 he met Stefania Wilczyńska. In 1911–1912 he became a director of Dom Sierot, the orphanage of his own design for Jewish children in Warsaw. He took Wilczyńska as his closest associate. There he formed a kind-of-a-republic for children with its own small parliament, court and newspaper. He reduced his other duties as a doctor.

In 1914 Korczak again became a military doctor with the rank of lieutenant during the [[World sadssa During the Polish-Soviet War he served again as a military doctor with the rank of major but was assigned to Warsaw after a brief stint in Łódź. He contracted typhus and his mother died of it.

In 1926 he let children begin their own newspaper, the Mały Przegląd, as a weekly attachment to the daily Polish-Jewish Newspaper Nasz Przegląd.

During the 1930s he had his own radio program until it was cancelled due to complaints from anti-semites. In 1933 he was awarded the Silver Cross of the Polonia Restituta. In 1934–1936 Korczak traveled yearly to Palestine and visited its kibbutzim. That lead to increasing anti-semitic attacks in Polish press. That also lead to a break with the non-Jewish orphanage he had been working for. Still he refused to move to Palestine even when Wilczyńska moved there for a year in 1938.

In 1939, when the World War II erupted, Korczak volunteered for duty in the Polish Army but was refused due to his age. He witnessed Wehrmacht taking over Warsaw. When Nazis created a Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, his orphanage was forced to move to the ghetto. Korczak moved in with them.

On August 5 (some say August 6), 1942, German soldiers came to collect the 192 (there is some debate about the actual number and it may have been 196) orphans and about one dozen staff members to take them to Treblinka extermination camp. Korczak had been offered sanctuary on the “Aryan side” of Warsaw but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children. Now too, he refused offers of sanctuary, insisting that he would go with the children. The children were dressed in their best clothes, and each carried a blue knapsack and a favorite book or toy. Joshua Perle, an eyewitness, described the procession of Korczak and the children through the ghetto to the Umschlagplatz (deportation point to the death camps):

... A miracle occurred. Two hundred children did not cry out. Two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep. Not one of them ran away. None tried to hide. Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, to their father and brother, Janusz Korczak, so that he might protect and preserve them. Janusz Korczak was marching, his head bent forward, holding the hand of a child, without a hat, a leather belt around his waist, and wearing high boots. A few nurses were followed by two hundred children, dressed in clean and meticulously cared for clothes, as they were being carried to the altar. (...) On all sides the children were surrounded by Germans, Ukrainians, and this time also Jewish policemen. They whipped and fired shots at them. The very stones of the street wept at the sight of the procession.

According to a popular legend, when the group of orphans finally reached the Umschlagplatz, an SS officer recognized Korczak as the author of one of his favorite children's books and offered to help him escape, but once again, Korczak refused. He boarded the trains with the children and was never heard from again.

"Janusz Korczak and the children" in Yad Vashem

Some time after, there were rumors that the trains had been diverted and that Korczak and the children had survived. There was, however, no basis to these stories. Most likely, Korczak was killed with most of his children in a gas chamber upon their arrival to Treblinka. There is a memorial grave for him at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.

[edit] Themes in the children's books

Korczak often employed the form of the fairy tale in order to actually prepare his young readers for the dilemmas and difficulties of real adult life, and the need to take responsible decisions.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In the 1923 King Matt the First (Król Maciuś Pierwszy) and its sequel King Matt on the Desert Island (Król Maciuś na wyspie bezludnej) Korczak depicted a child prince catapulted to the throne by the sudden death of his father, who must learn from various mistakes.

He tries to read and answer all his mail by himself and finds that the volume is too much and he needs to rely on secretaries; he is exasperated with his minsters and has them arrested, but soon realises that he does not know enough to govern by himself, and is forced to release the ministers and institute constitutional monarchy; when a war breaks out he does not accpet being shut up in his palace, but slips away and joins up, pretending to be a peasant boy - and narrowly avoids becoming a POW; he takes the offer of a friendly journalist to publish for him a "royal paper" -and finds much later that he gets carefully-edited news and that the journalist is covering up the gross corruption of the young king's best friend; he tries to organise the children of all the world to hold processions and demand their rights - and ends up anatagonising other kings; he falls in love with a black African princess and outrages racist opinion (by modren standards, however, Korczak's depiction of blacks is itself not completely free of stereotypes which were current at the time of writing); finally, he is overthrown by the invasion of three foreign armies and exiled to a desert island, where he must come to terms with reality - and finally does.

The later "Kajtuś The Wizard" (Kajtuś czarodziej) (1935) anticipated Harry Potter in depicting a schoolboy who gains magic powers (and its popularity in the 1930's, in both Polish and translation to several other languges, was nearly compareable to the present one of the Potter series). Kajtuś has, however, a far more difficult path than Harry Potter: he has no Hogwarts-type School of Magic where he could be taught by expert mages, but must learn to use and control his powers all by himself - and most importantly, to learn his limitations. (See Cover page of the Hebrew translation of "Kajtuś".

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Selected writings

[edit] Fiction

Children of the streets (Dzieci ulicy, Warsaw, 1901)
Koszałki Opałki (Warsaw, 1905)
Child of the Drawing Room (Dziecko salonu, Warsaw, 1906, 2nd edition 1927) – partially autobiographical
Mośki, Joski i Srule (Warsaw, 1910)
Józki, Jaśki i Franki (Warsaw, 1911)
Sława (Warsaw, 1913, corrected 1935 and 1937)
Bobo (Warsaw, 1914)
King Matt the First (Król Maciuś Pierwszy, Warsaw, 1923)
King Matt on the Desert Island (Król Maciuś na wyspie bezludnej, Warsaw 1923)
Bankructwo małego Dżeka (Warsaw, 1924)
When I Am Little Again (Kiedy znów będę mały, Warsaw, 1925)
Senat szaleńców, humoreska ponura (a screenplay for the Ateneum theatre in Warsaw, 1931)
Kajtuś czarodziej (Warsaw, 1935)

[edit] Pedagogic books

Momenty wychowawcze (Warsaw, 1919, 2nd edition 1924)
How to Love a Child (Jak kochać dziecko, Warsaw 1919, 2nd edition 1920 as Jak kochać dzieci)
The Child's Right to Respect (Prawo dziecka do szacunku, Warsaw, 1929)
Pedagogika żartobliwa (Warsaw, 1933)