Today is August 7—today is the day 83 years ago in 1942—when this great man was murdered.Janusz Korczak was one of my greatest heroes.

Janusz Korczak (the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit) was a prominent figure in prę-war Poland, well-known and admired by both Jews and Gentiles alike. He was a medical physician—a pediatrician. He was an educational reformer—In fact, he believed that if you wanted to teach children how to become leaders, then you must give them the opportunity to lead. He was a radio personality who hosted a popular children’s radio show and he was the author of the most popular children’s book in pre-war Poland, King Matt the Great. (In this book, the children are wise and the adults are the silly ones). Before the war, he ran an Orphanage for all children, but when Jews were forced into the Ghetto, he moved his Orphanage (with the Jewish children) within the ghetto confines. Called the Dom Sierot Orphanage / Nasa Dom (translation: Our Home), located on 92 Krochmalna Street, it gave the children the sense of a family and of being loved, despite having no biological parents. Janusz Korczak and his exceptional staff—including most famously Stefania Wieczynska.

Although he was given many opportunities to escape (both from the ghetto and, at the end, from his impending death), he refused to leave ‘his’ children.

On August 7, 1942, Janusz Korczak—with all the children in the Ghetto Orphanage and their valiant teachers, including Stefania Wieczynska—were pushed into a crowded cattle car bound for Treblinka, and, immediately upon their arrival, they were all murdered.

An aside: Although I had been to Poland many times, I always avoided going to Treblinka, preferring instead to visit the more ‘realistic’ concentration camps (like Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek) where the camp layout was closer to its former state, not simply representational. However, on one trip, decades ago, I found myself with hours to spare before I was scheduled to board my flight out of Poland, so I asked the taxi driver to take me to Treblinka first. By the way, at that time, there were no signs pointing to Treblinka, and it was very difficult to find it. Finally, after circuitous routes and asking people, we finally located it.

I left the taxi and I began to walk, alone, through the boulders—thousands of boulders—some were small, symbolizing small shtetlach (villages), some were medium sized and large boulders, representing medium and large population of Jewish communities destroyed, and then there was the largest—representing destroyed Jewish Warsaw. Treblinka turned out to be so extraordinarily moving that I wandered through the site for hours, and then, ultimately, missed my flight!

When did I find myself there? I was in Treblinka on August 7, over 30 years ago, on the very anniversary of the murder of Janusz Korczak and all his orphans!

Following are a series of photos** to give you at taste of this great man and his innovative educational ideas.

** Note: All these photos are from the monograph: JANUSZ KORCZAK: FOTOBIOGRAFIA / PHOTOBIOGRAPHY, published in Warsaw, 2017, Jewish Historical Institute. This was a gift from my treasured friend, Alison Vick, of the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, herself, a gifted educator, extraordinaire.

The Orphanage—before the war—included all children, not only Jewish orphans, as it did later, when forced to move into the confines of the Warsaw Ghetto, after war started

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Janusz Korczak—a thinker, a writer, an educational reformer, a doctor, a popular radio personality and everyone’s favorite advocate.

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Here is Janusz walking with one of the most loyal teachers on his staff, Stefania Wieczynska. Both accompanied the children of the Orphanage to Treblinka and death.

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Children at summer camp, 1938.

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This quote is typical of how safe and loved the children felt, living at Korczak’s Warsaw Orphanage.

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Here, in the quote below, we see how deeply ingrained Poland is within Korczak—he is Poland and Poland is him.

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Here is the main dining hall (left side of room) at the Orphanage/ Dom Sierot in 1940

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Main Dining Hall at the Orphanage (right side of room), 1940.

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Closeup of children at the Orphanage Dining Hall, 1940.

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Here is the Orphanage garden, where the children helped to grow and harvest their food, 1940.

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This is a prayer by Korczak; by this time, everyone is starving and his plea is for bread / in Polish: ‘chleb’ (Excerpt from his Diary).

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After parents were dead, the children tried to take care of each other. Warsaw Ghetto, 1941-42.

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