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These new type of non full orphans grab your hear,street wise , and children of poverty put in shelters and Korczak watched their performance easily moved to tears.They had sorrow in their eyes and bore the weight beyond their 10 years of many generations.These were street wise.Notice the no nonsense portrait of Stefa.She is destined to be responsible for 100's of children for the next 30 years.Stefa's polish patriot background is outlined in her family and her upbringing. Stefa spoke no0 Yiddish and had no knowledge of Jewish ritual.She, her older sister Julia, and her younger brother Stanislaw (Stash) occupied a six-room apartment with their parents in a building that had been part of her mother´s dowry. BIO AND QUOTE) Evidently her upbringing had a bearing on her no nonsense approach to life which was carried over to her responsibilities for the children carried on for 30 years.Stefa's mother, an ardent Polish patriot,saw to it that her two youngest daughters went to Mlle Jadwiga Sikorska´s exclusive private school for girls-where Polish culture was taught surreptitiously-and then to the University of Liege in Belgium rather than to the Russian university in Warsaw. (QUOTE BIO) Yes Stefa's mother was unconventional and taught her organizational ability. Stefa's degree was in the natural sciences but her interest lay in education Stefa. When she returned to Warsaw and noticed the small Jewish shelter near her home run by the Orphans Aid Society, she immediately volunteered her services. Before long, she became so indispensable that Stella Eliasberg put her in charge.(QUOTE) It was as if this were a sychronistic experience especially her teaming up with Janusz later, a near perfect compliment. Her indispensability was noticed right away by Stella who put her in charge of the Jewish shelter.Esterka Weintraub was her only assistant, another orphan became to her at age 13 like a daughter. The early phases of family here were emerging and that emerged with years in extenuating.The earlier circumstances were truly revolting as here quoted: (The director who ran the shelter before the Society took over had used its meager funds for her own purposes, dressing and eating well, while the emaciated children, clad in rags, crawled about the filthy floor grabbing at rotten potatoes that had been thrown to them.) Stefa was close to the Eliasbergs and had no idea of the impending life work with Janusz would yet emerge and noticed. He (Janusz) would cultivate the joy of the children when the balding doctor had pockets full of candy and magic tricks and had a tailored repertoire of riddles and fairy tales always ready for the telling . Stefa could bring order to the ramshackle home, and they bonded with a common spiritual daughter Esterka (Janusz and Stefa) . Along with his "pedagogical love" which was all embracing, they planned to send Esterka to Stefa's University in Belgium.
By the time Korczak arrived at the shelter in the dilapidated former
nunnery on Franciskanska Street, the program in honor of Maria Konopnicka, a
poet and children´s writer, had already begun. He stood in the back watching the
pale, spindly performers with their shaven heads, their clean but ill-fitting
clothes, reciting the poems they had been rehearsing all week. He was so moved
by their shy smiles, he could hardly hold back his tears.
They were not all
full orphans. Most of their fathers had died of consumption, malnutrition, and
overwork; their widowed mothers, unable to manage, were forced to put them in
shelters like this while they went out to work. The older ones were already
streetwise and tough, with the same sorrow in their sunken eyes, in their uneasy
high-pitched laughter, that Korczak had observed in the Polish waifs of the
Warsaw slums -"rare children who bear not only the weight of their ten years,
but deep in their souls the burden of many generations."
Korczak noticed
Stefa standing to one side coaching them, her lips moving with theirs. Whenever
a child finished, he ran to her for a hug, and then stayed close, clinging with
the others like magnets to her long skirt.
No one would have called Stefa a
beauty, even then. At the age of twenty-three, she was eight years younger than
Korczak and a good head taller. Her dark, serious eyes - the best feature in her
broad, plain facerevealed both warmth and strength. In a picture of her taken at
the time, a short functional hairdo frames an intense, no-nonsense expression,
which already suggests the woman who is destined to carry responsibility for
hundreds of children on her shoulders for thirty years. A white Peter Pan collar
rests without artifice on a black sweater that covers a plump figure bordering
on the matronly.
Stefa´s acculturated background was in many ways similar to
Korczak´s. She spoke no Yiddish and had little knowledge of Jewish ritual. She,
her older sister Julia, and her younger brother Stanislaw (Stash) occupied a
six-room apartment with their parents in a building that had been part of her
mother´s dowry. The two oldest daughters had already married and moved out.
Stefa's father, the owner of a textile factory, was in fragile health, and left
much ofthe responsibility for raising the children to his wife. in a period when
few women received a higher education, Stefa´s mother, an ardent Polish patriot,
saw to it that her two youngest daughters went to Mlle Jadwiga Sikorska´s
exclusive private school for girls-where Polish culture was taught
surreptitiously-and then to the University of Liege in Belgium rather than to
the Russian university in Warsaw. While they were away, she busied herself
adding to their trousseaus, which she kept in large hope chests in her bedroom,
little imagining that neither of them would ever marry. Everything was
fastidiously prepared, down to the last properly sewn button; she judged the
character of a person by how tightly his buttons were secured. Tied to home by
her young son and her husband, this energetic woman who loved to travel
contented herself with touring remote areas of the city by tramcar. She would
come back refreshed, as from a long adventure. It was from this unconventional
mother that Stefa absorbed many of her values and her organizational ability.
Stefa´s degree was in natural science, but her real interest lay in
education. When she returned to Warsaw and noticed the small Jewish shelter near
her home run by the Orphans Aid Society, she immediately volunteered her
services. Before long, she became so indispensable that Stella Eliasberg put her
in charge. (The director who ran the shelter before the Society took over had
used its meager funds for her own purposes, dressing and eating well, while the
emaciated children, clad in rags, crawled about the filthy floor grabbing at
rotten potatoes that had been thrown to them.) Stefa´s only assistant was an
energetic thirteen- year-old ward of another orphanage, Esterka Weintraub, who
had become like a daughter.
Stefa had also become very close to the
Eliasbergs in the course of her work. When they told her that Janusz Korczak was
going to attend the shelter´s party, she had no doubt that this famous advocate
of children´s welfare would be interested in their project-but how interested
she could not have anticipated. Korczak began stopping by the shelter at odd
moments to chat with her and play with the children. The orphans would scream
with delight at the sight ofthe slim, modest, balding doctor whose pockets were
always filled with candy and magic tricks, and whose repertoire of riddles and
fairy tales was limitless. They made an effective team: Stefa with her ability
to bring order to the dark, ramshackle quarters, and he with his natural way
with children. His love, which he would one day call "pedagogical love" (not
sentimental, but based on mutual respect), embraced them all, and especially
little Esterka Weintraub, whose sweet, helpful disposition made her as appealing
to him as to Stefa. When they talked ofsending her someday to Stefa's university
in Belgium, it was almost as if they were discussing the future of their own
daughter.
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