Doctor Korczak

I could go on and on about how I think my children have benefited from homeschooling, and what they have learned since I took them out of public school, but at the moment I won't. I don't want to digress here; I want to discuss some things I have learned since we've been homeschooling.

I like to think that I'm well informed. I'm a voracious reader, and my favorite TV stations are stations like Discovery and History International. Plus, I'm supposed to be presenting unknowns to my kids. Still, the things I have learned amaze me.

The fact that I, a museum junkie in a family of museum junkies, a rockhound with a frankly embarrassingly large rock collection for a grown woman to have, did not know that there was a rock, mineral and gem museum with free admission about 20 minutes from my home until I started homeschooling is staggering.

One of the things you learn quickly on any quest for knowledge is that you will never, ever know it all. You can cram facts into your head 24 hours a day and barely scratch the surface - any surface, of any given subject. I'm also a big believer in learning outside the classroom. (That's one of the reasons that homeschooling is a good fit for us.) Unlike most American schoolkids, I knew that Lincoln and Kennedy were not the only presidents assassinated. It wasn't until I was an adult, a homeowner and parent of two, that I could tell you details about anarchist Leon Czolgosz, killer of William McKinley, or would-be Nixon assassin Sam Bick. Thanks to the play "Assassins," I can sing a remarkable little ditty that sticks in your head, sung by the character of Charles Guiteau, assassin of James Garfield. (Details about Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and her attempt on Gerald Ford's life, I'd known since I was 17. It's a strange world.)

It was in another play, and a decade and a half later, that I was introduced to one of my heroes.

Two years ago, I was teaching speech and theater classes for junior high and high school students when an audition notice showed up in my inbox. A local theater company was casting a play that needed two dozen or so children and teens. I'd never worked with this company, but knew its founder by reputation as talented, good with youth and running a quality theater company. I took seven of my students to auditions - five ended up performing, including my son.

The play was about Janusz Korczak; I'd never heard of him. A medical doctor and author, he was born in 1878 (or thereabouts; his father didn't officially register his birth for years, and wasn't sure if he was off by a year or so) in Warsaw, Poland. His given name is Henryk (pronounced Hen-rick, not Hine-rick, the way the name is pronounced in neighboring Germany) Goldszmit. The son and grandson of physicians, he followed in their footsteps. As a young boy, though, he felt isolated and lonely because he wasn't allowed to play with the neighborhood children because his father found those children to be beneath him. They were poor and often dirty; it just wouldn't do to associate with them.

As an adult, he treated poor children, often charging his wealthy patients enough to cover their care and that of a patient unable to pay. He was universally accepted as a gifted doctor, but Polish society still found his association with the poor to be unseemly.

He was an educator, and a proponent of what we now call "values education," the idea that kindness, honesty, compassion and a good work ethic are at least as important, and probably more important, than learning to read or write or calculate sums. His most scathing opinions are directed at the selfish and badly behaved.

In the days when radio was king, he had a successful radio program as the Old Doctor, who dispensed wisdom and wit over the airwaves.

He took the name Janusz Korczak as his pen name, and authored a number of books, both for adults and children. His most famous children's novel, King Matt the First, is beloved by millions, I found out. Modern scholars compare his work to that of Rowling, Barrie and Dahl. The testimonial on the front cover of the edition that I own is written by Maurice Sendak - "We need King Matt now, in our world, more than ever." How is it that I had never heard of this book? Why is it not on shelves in schools and bookstores? I am loving King Matt himself and the wry writing that tells his story. I have been actively seeking out Korczak's books, and the Internet is my friend. I got my English language version, printed in the USA, on Amazon for 16 cents.

He was an expert in child psychology and child development. His work entitled The Rights of the Child has been quoted, reprinted, dissected and discussed by experts from many nations. He was known to advocate in court for those who couldn't do it for themselves and couldn't hire any advocates. He believed deeply in the power of play as an educational tool, and in the child's rights being equal to or surpassing that of adults. They deserved to have their opinions respected, even if they might be wrong, the same as adults, he said, flying in the face of those who believed otherwise.

He decided, after much soul searching, that his highest calling was to combine all his previous work and become the director of orphanages. As a pediatrician, he healed children one at a time, as an educator and advocate he reached people on a slightly larger scale, but in the orphanage he saw the chance to direct and change the future on a larger scale still. Deeply introspective, he examined his motives and beliefs thoroughly, then went about creating, for poor children with no other family or opportunity, an existence and education that rivaled that received by the wealthy and privileged in expensive boarding schools.

When most people from our culture hear "orphanage," they get a very Dickensian, Oliver Twist picture in their heads of abuse and deprivation. This is not an accurate picture of Korczak's orphanages. The children were encouraged to think, to be creative, to interact with the world around them. The student newspaper he started in one of his orphanages, written and published by the children, was distributed and read throughout Warsaw. They were governed in part by a Children's Court, where any resident could bring any grievance and be heard. The judges at weekly sessions changed, always chosen from those students who had no charges pending that week.

Korczak was outspoken about children's rights and their need for play, but that didn't mean a world of chaos, no responsibility and ice cream for dinner. The orphanage had a routine and a schedule. Children had chores, duties and expectations. One of those expectations was that they try their hardest and do their best at any task. They were also expected to be very respectful of others, and their rights, and not to infringe on another. The governing principles of Children's Court included the fact that truth was sometimes difficult or impossible to find, but they were expected to get as close as possible. It was also noted that the judges were imperfect and might therefore render faulty judgement, but it was also noted that to do so willingly was "shameful." Children who simply refused to follow rules would be asked to leave.

He never married or had biological children, but when asked how many children he had, he answered in the hundreds, including all of his charges. Others often thought he was joking; he was not.

How is it that I didn't hear of this man until I was over 40?

Korczak himself had a little something to say about that. "The world knows nothing of a great many Poles," he wrote.

I take a ridiculously unearned delight in amazing Polish individuals. My paternal great grandparents, Frank Zakrzewski and Josephine Marcinkiewicz, are from Poland. I'm unclear on when they emigrated, but my grandfather Peter was born in Michigan in 1898. Having Polish ancestors means I feel that when I hear of amazing Poles, I can share in a kind of national pride. I take special pride in the lives of Lech Walesa and Pope John II. Dr. Korczak has been added to that list.

As the infomercials would say, "But wait! There's more!" Dr. Korczak, known to his staff and orphans as Pan Doctor, already had amazing credentials and achievements by the 1930s. Then, history wrote a new chapter, one that cemented his name and his story even more firmly in history.

Janusz Korczak was Jewish. At a time and place when Jews were seen as a separate people, not "truly" Polish, his father and grandfather had worked to integrate Jewish society with mainstream Polish society. Dr. Korczak did the same. But, the 1930s were a dangerous time to be Jewish in Poland, as in most of Europe, as the Nazis forcibly annexed and occupied country after country. Korczak was fiercely patriotic. He had served Poland in WWI, and he continued to wear his uniform, an act of open defiance toward the Nazi occupiers.

He refused to wear the mandated white armband with the blue Star of David. Other Jews of his era wore it out of obligation, fear, or, most admirably, because they refused to be embarrassed about their religion, identity and heritage. Korczak refused, because he felt it was a desecration for the Nazis to feel that they could have any say in where, when or how a religious symbol was used. I admire both mindsets - the why is always more important to me than the action itself. Korczak actually spent time in jail for refusing to wear the armband.

He had run orphanages for Christian children as well as Jewish ones. As the Nazi oppression grew, one of his trusted aides and partners, Stefa Wilczynska, left Poland and emigrated to Palestine to work on a kibbutz. Korczak visited her there, and considered building an orphanage in Palestine. But he was a Pole, and Poland called to him. He loved Warsaw as though it were human. He returned to Warsaw and the children there.

His visit to Palestine caused the Nazis to label him a Zionist as well as a troublemaker. The persecution intensified. His orphanage was moved to less and less desirable quarters. Rationing and anti-Jewish laws made it harder and harder to buy food.

Stefa returned to Poland, Pan Doctor and the children. She knew she was needed.

Finally, they and all other Jews were moved into the Warsaw ghetto, walled in, and endured the worst conditions yet. Overcrowded, underfed, cold - the ghetto was not the home from which they had been driven.

At the orphanage, the adults tried to keep everything as normal as possible. There were lessons, singing, baths, chores and adults who looked out for them. Korczak did whatever he could to feed them all, the children first. He begged, bribed, threatened and dealt with black marketeers. They endured illness from rotten food.

Korczak's last book is simply called Ghetto Diary. It's the actual diary he wrote during the months of May to August, 1942. He talks about the books he hopes to write in the future, including a biography of young King David. It is several pages in before he notes, drily, "I have forgotten to mention that now, too, a war is going on." He writes of weighing and measuring the children every Saturday morning, to see how much (but in reality, if) they have grown. He holds imaginary conversations. He muses about everything, always writing late at night or early in the morning when everyone else is asleep.

The play my son and my other students were cast in was called "Korczak's Children." It covers roughly the period from mid July to early August 1942 and, from all the reading I have done since, it is remarkably accurate. The director, Stacey, without frightening the children or being heavy handed, told them, "These are actual people you are playing. Your performance must do honor to their lives."

She brought in a concentration camp survivor, an orphan, to speak to the children. The youngest cast member was 4, so some things were slightly sanitized. The idea of being an orphan was scary enough to some children. They were amazed that he didn't remember his true name or how old he was.

My son was 14 when he played the part of Ivan, an orphan. In 1942, my mother, a lovely Michigan farm girl of Polish descent, was 13. She did not come to see her grandson in the play. "I just can't. You understand." We did.

Korczak received several offers to smuggle him out of the ghetto and out of the country. He refused. Stefa received similar offers; she, too, turned them down. Who would take care of the children if they left? More importantly, what kind of person leaves hundreds of children in peril, just to save themselves?

He does not mention it himself in his diary, but his biography tells of his attempt to establish manufacturing in the orphanage so that his children would be considered "essential" to the war effort of the Nazis, and therefore immune to deportation. The effort failed.

Rumors went through the ghetto, rumors that people undergoing "relocation" simply disappeared. More rumors came, rumors of what may have happened to them. No one was sure.

Esterka Winograd, a former pupil of the doctor's, came to the orphanage to help the staff, and, in July 1942, she directed a play at the orphanage - "The Post Office," by the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore. It tells the story of a dying boy, awaiting a letter from the king. In the play "Korczak's Children," Esterka exults that it is also "an allegory about the Germans." Esterka was played in the local production by a beautiful dancer and actress named Tova. She absolutely glowed. Esterka herself was part of the Resistance, taking great chances with secret meetings where the overthrow of the invading Nazis was discussed.

"The Post Office" was a triumph for the orphanage - it seemed that everyone in the ghetto came to see it. Korczak writes in his diary, "Applause, handshakes, smiles, efforts at cordial conversation." It was an effort for some, who wondered why he had allowed the children to perform such a "dark" play - the main character, the ill boy, dies. Korczak is reported to have replied that it was a lesson that it is sometimes necessary to accept death serenely.

The children would need the lesson. Rumors became fact, notices posted throughout the ghetto - more "relocations" were coming. The residents of the orphanage were to be sent to Treblinka. It was not a concentration camp, a forced labor camp, a resettlement camp - it was a death camp. Its entire purpose was to execute people quickly, in massive numbers. The doctor and the children did not, could not, know that, but they sensed that this new move was more sinister than the others.

Esterka was arrested; the doctor was beside himself. The chairman of the Judenrat, the Jewish Council, committed suicide rather than sign the order of deportation. A friend of Korczak's, he kept a stash of pills just for that purpose. Korczak had kept such a stash, too, in order to maintain "some kind of control" over his circumstances, but he didn't use them. He had the children to think of.

In his diary, Korczak asked repeatedly, "Why am I writing this?" Part of the answer is simply, "Because you are a writer." It's what writers do, how they make sense of the world, how they process their own thoughts, as natural to them as breathing. I think, though, that he answered his own question. In the last pages of the diary, he says, "What matters is that all this did happen." He wonders about the young Nazi with the rifle that he can see through his window - why doesn't he shoot? "My bald head in the window. What a splendid target." He supposes it is because he has been given no order to shoot. Korczak wonders where he came from, who he was before he put on the uniform. "Perhaps he doesn't even know that things are - as they are?"

It is the last entry.

The residents of the orphanage were sitting down to breakfast when the order came. They were to report to the train station immediately. No one who heard the doctor's instructions is still living, but those who saw the residents march to the train, and those who knew him well, surmise that it went something along the lines of: Don't worry. We've been moved before. We may be moved again. The important thing is that we will all be together.

Each child took along a favorite book or toy. They paired up and held hands. Dr. Korczak put on his Army uniform. They marched four across, except for the front group, made up of Korczak, holding the hands of two children. They carried their flag, one with the green flag of King Matt on one side, and the blue Star of David on a white background on the other. One witness called this orderly procession the most moving protest against the brutality of the Nazis that he had ever witnessed.

At the station, a member of the Jewish council who ran a first aid station (oh, the irony!) on the Umschlagplatz again tried to get Dr. Korczak to flee. He would not consider leaving the children, even for a moment. He was their father. There is another report that a Nazi officer recognized Korczak as the author of his favorite children's book, and offered to put him "on another train," a train with a different destination. Again, Korczak refused.

The Jewish police saluted the regal man in the Army uniform. As he helped the children climb into the cars, it is said that the Nazis asked, "Who is that man?"

There were 192 orphans and 10 staff members from Korczak's orphanage that day. Also on the train were approximately 4,000 other orphans.

In some cultures, it is the custom to present food and drink to the dead to honor them. I grew up putting flowers on graves. In the Jewish culture, a stone is placed on the grave to honor the dead. Where Treblinka stood, there is a field of stones. People bring them in remembrance of those who have no graves. Approximately one million people died there - 1,000 or so Gypsies, the rest Jews. One rock bears the notation, "Janusz Korczak and the children."

Korczak's Gentile friend, Igor Newerly, had repeatedly urged him to flee. He refused, but promised Newerly that if anything happened, he would send his diary. The day after the train departed Warsaw, the first day without the 192 chidren, one of whom might have grown up to cure cancer, or AIDS, who may have invented or written or taught or sung, the first day without Korczak or Stefa, a red haired boy appeared at Newerly's door. He handed Newerly a package and ran. The package contained the diary.

Newerly and a friend bricked the diary up in a wall. After the war, after he himself spent 2 years in Auschwitz, Newerly returned. Almost 10 years later, he was the first to publish the diary. Its survival is no less amazing, its impact as profound, as Anne Frank's.

The back of my copy of Ghetto Diary ($6.99 on Amazon) has a notation at the top: "Jewish Studies/Biography." Why isn't this book in every bookstore and library? Why aren't Korczak's other works next to it?

"What matters is that all this did happen."

All photos from the TheatreWorks of Northern Nevada production of "Korczak's Children"

directed by Stacey Spain

photo copyright: The Reflection Works Photography