Janusz Korczak - a teacher who was with children until the end

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Today, July 22, marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of the world famous Polish educator, writer and doctor Janusz Korczak. His real name was Hersh Henrik Goldschmit, and the pseudonym under which this man went down in history, he initially took for himself only in order to sign his literary works with it. Although, first of all, Korczak was still not a writer, but a teacher who has amazing abilities to find a common language with children and teach this to other adults.

The future great teacher was born in 1878 in Warsaw, in the family of a lawyer. He studied at a prestigious Russian gymnasium, which was distinguished by a very strict discipline - and from the age of fifteen he was forced to break the rules adopted there, to run away from lessons in order to earn extra money by tutoring and help pay for his father's treatment. But his work did not prevent him from successfully graduating from school and entering the medical faculty of the University of Warsaw. At first, he wanted to become a pediatrician, however, having visited during practice in orphanages and hospitals where orphans were treated, he began to be more inclined to become an educator and raise children who have lost their parents and felt useless to anyone.

Doctor, teacher, writer …

In parallel with his studies at the Faculty of Medicine, Henrik Goldschmitt attended classes at the so-called Flying University - an underground educational institution in which lectures were secretly given on Polish history and other subjects without any censorship. In addition, while still a student, Goldschmitt began working in a children's hospital, and in the summer - in camps where children rested. In 1905, when the Russo-Japanese War was going on, he graduated from the university and went to the front as a military doctor.

After the end of the war, he continued to study pedagogy: he visited Germany, France and England, where he listened to lectures on raising children and visited orphanages to see "from the inside" how everything works in them. Having gained experience in this matter, he returned to Warsaw and in 1911 opened the "Orphanage" there, an orphanage for Jewish children, in which he began to apply new methods of upbringing - softer than was accepted all over the world at that time, more respectful in relation to the personality of the child. But at the same time, they are quite strict: respect for the pupils not only did not mean that they were pampered and that they grew up in "hothouse" conditions - on the contrary, the attitude towards the child as a person meant that he should be responsible for his actions and for sure also respect the caregivers and other children.

By that time, Janusz Korczak had been writing books for more than ten years and was better known to the general public as a writer, and not as the head of an orphanage. Later, his scientific works on pedagogy began to appear. Colleagues often disapproved of them - many of Korczak's ideas in those years seemed strange and not applicable in practice. How is it - to communicate with a child in the same way as you would communicate with an adult? How is it - not to hide a child from life, to allow him to take risks sometimes, learning the world? Such "seditious" thoughts in our time often cause controversy, and even at the beginning of the last century …

However, practice has shown that the educational methods of Janusz Korczak give excellent results. His inmates who grew up and left the orphanage, by their very lives, broke the stereotype that “orphanages raise criminals” - they all got jobs, lived ordinary lives and started families. And in fact, this was not surprising, because in the orphanage they were accustomed to responsibility from an early age and prepared for adulthood. Many benefactors were ready to help Korczak's institution with finances, but he only accepted help from those who agreed not to interfere in the internal affairs of the orphanage.

An example for other orphanages

During the First World War, Janusz Korczak worked as a doctor in a field hospital. During his absence, the orphanage was run by his closest assistant Stefania Vilchinskaya. Returning from the war, he continued his main work, and in addition, he began to publish the newspaper "Maloye Obozreniye". It was intended for children, and many materials were written by his pupils. Korczak himself wrote articles on pedagogy in various specialized journals and lectured at pedagogical faculties and courses, trying to share his experience with colleagues as widely as possible. His method was adopted by another Warsaw boarding school, Our Home, whose employees have repeatedly turned to Janusz for help.

Educators stayed with children

And then the Second World War began. The "Orphanage" with all its pupils was transferred to the Warsaw ghetto, and although the teachers were allowed to leave it, not one of them left their wards. Korczak tried to make sure that, if possible, nothing changed in the orphanage: both children and adults began to lead the same life in the ghetto as before. The inmates studied and did different things, the teachers took care of them and kept order … And this continued until August 6, 1942, when most of the ghetto prisoners were taken out of the city and killed in gas chambers.

Early in the morning, the “Orphans' House” in full force, together with several other groups of adult inhabitants of the ghetto, were taken out into the courtyard and began to take turns to translate to vocals. Korczak and the rest of the teachers were asked to stay in the ghetto, but none of them agreed to leave their pupils. The head of the orphanage told the children that they were being transported from Warsaw to the village, and when they were divided into two columns, he went to the station in front of one of them, taking the two youngest children by the arms. The second column was led in the same way by Stefania Vilchinskaya.

Janusz Korczak could have been released from the ghetto earlier, but even then he refused to escape alone. The teacher Igor Newerly, who tried to help him, later recalled how Korczak reacted to this suggestion: “The meaning of the doctor's answer was this: you will not leave your child in misfortune, illness, danger. And then there are two hundred children. How do you leave them alone in the gas chamber? And is it possible to survive all this?"

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