Janusz Korczak

Henryk Goldszmit was born in Warsaw in 1879 into an assimilated Jewish family. His father, a lawyer, was committed to an asylum when Henryk was in his teens and died there. He qualified as a doctor and began writing books and articles under the pen name Janusz Korczak.

In 1912 he became director of a new Jewish orphanage on Krochmalna Street, run with Stefania Wilczyńska, and lived in an attic room there for the next thirty years. He believed that most adults did not respect children, and that this was the root of a great deal of cruelty. So the orphanage had a parliament, a court in which children could bring cases against other children and against staff, including him, and a newspaper. He wrote How to Love a Child and King Matt the First, and became known across Poland as the Old Doctor from his radio talks. He was also difficult and stubborn, and got by on very little sleep.

When Germany occupied Warsaw the orphanage was forced into the ghetto. Korczak spent his days begging for food and refusing, more than once, offers from friends to smuggle him out. Every child, he insisted, still needed to be washed and fed and told a story.

On a day in early August 1942 the orphanage was ordered to the Umschlagplatz. Witnesses described him at the head of a column of nearly two hundred children, walking calmly. They were put on a train to Treblinka and murdered on arrival.