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Korczak International News: Commissioner Hammarberg pay tribute to Korczak in Warsaw
http://www.korczak.org.uk/portfolio/select1.html
The best tribute to Janusz Kroczak are the articles he wrote and the sentiments he expressed
Note this post from his own words:
http://www.korczak.org.uk/portfolio/select1.html
The best tribute to Janusz Kroczak are the articles he wrote and the sentiments he expressed
Note this post from his own words:
COMMENT
Dzieina Street was set up as a hospital for the sick and dying children in the Warsaw ghetto. "a mortuary where corpses crawl, run by bandits and thieves who robbed the children of any food or help." (Quote). The children were in their own excrement and died of typhus and dysentery.Korczak demanded to be in charge of this hospital and committed the insuperable task of caring for the orphanage. Within a few weeks with two colleagues, he restored some order and spent his spare time tending to the dying children. He converted the premises to a hospice with makeshift bunks and gave a measure of dignity to the dying children. He learned the essence of charity in a one month stay in London.
ApplicationHenryk Goldszmit Residence: I6 Sienna - 9 Sliska Street, February 9,
1942. Written in the Warsaw Ghetto 6 months before his
death.
C O M M E N T A R Y
Special Note: Dzieina Street
was set up as a hospital for the sick and dying children in the Warsaw ghetto.
Several thousand children were crammed into a space meant for just a few
hundred. Korczak described it as "a mortuary where corpses crawl, run by bandits
and thieves who robbed the children of any food or help." The children were left
lying on the floor like animals amidst their own excrement. Typhus and dysentery
took their toll. Korczak could not tolerate the suffering of these children and
demanded to be put in charge of the hospital, even though he was committed to
the impossible task of caring for the children at his orphanage. Together with
two of his colleagues he restored relative order within a few weeks and spent
all his spare time tending to the dying. He arranged for makeshift bunks to be
built, so that the children could die with care and dignity. This was perhaps
the first hospice of its kind. He makes some very telling admissions of his state of mind regarding children in this application including the following:
M Y O W N T E X T
- he states he is the master of the "economy of effort".
- I know not his allusion to Harpagon but will research this allusion.
- I consider myself an expert in medicine, education, eugenics, politics.(QUOTE) This quote can be taken at face value and the following is surely caustic and autobiographical in the same satiric breath : Experience has endowed me with an appreciable ability for co-existing and collaborating even with criminal characters and with born imbeciles. (QUOTE)
- Ambitious obstinate fools cut Korczak off but he does not return the favor. He tolerated an unsuitable manager in his orphanage over one year and yet he sought her to stay and she soon left of her own accord. The deficient present staff Korczak preferred to the uncertainty of a new staff. I anticipate that the criminal characters among the staff of the orphanage at Dzieina Street will voluntarily resign from the hated work to which they are tied by cowardice and inertia alone.(QUOTE)
- Korczak's education and job experience as explained in semi resume format are very revealing: He worked in the clinics of Berlin and Paris one year,6 months,and A month's excursion to London helped me to understand the quintessence of charity work (a rewarding experience). (QUOTE) His exposure to different personalities and a variety of medical fields had a broadening aspect ,I am certain, on his resultant insights in his work with children. My masters in medicine were: Professor Przewoski (anatomy and bacteriology), Nasonow (zoologist), Szczerbakow (psychiatry), and the pediatricians Rnkelsztein, Baginski, Marfan, Hutinel ( Berlin , Paris).(On a day off - visits to orphanages, reformatories, places of detention for so-called juvenile delinquents.) One month in a school for retarded children, one month in Ziehen's neurological clinic.My masters in the hospital at Sliska Street:Koral, the cynic and nihilist, the jovial Kramsztyk the serious Gantz, the fine diagnostician Eliasberg, and also the medical assistant Slizewski and a selfless nurse, Laja.I expect to meet a few of the kind of Laja in the children's slaughterhouse (and morgue) at 39 Dzieina Street. (Quote)Note his allusion to the children's slaughterhouse. CHILDREN ARE MATURE,DIGNIFIED AND SENSIBLE WHEN FACED WITH DEATH AND THIS TO ME IS A SURPRISING YET 'INTACT' COMMENT KORCZAK WOULD MAKE. Statistics taught him truth and objectivity and unbiased assessment of fact.He weighed and measured children for a quarter-century and kept the graphs (priceless). He at first contacted the Jewish at child Markiewicz summer vacation camp . In Michalowka, the free lending library,he worked several years and he observed richly.
Kind
friends urge me to write my last will. I am doing it now in my curriculum vitae,
to go with the application for a job as a teacher in the orphanage at 39 Dzieina
Street. I am sixty-four. As to health, I received my certificate in jail last
year. In spite of the exacting conditions there, not once did I report sick, not
once did I go to the doctor, not once did I absent myself from gymnastics,
dreaded even by my younger colleagues. I eat like a horse; sleep soundly;
recently, after drinking ten shots of strong vodka, I returned home at a brisk
pace from Rymarska Street to Sienna Street - late at night. I get up twice
during the night to empty ten large night-pails.I smoke, do not overindulge in
liquor. mental faculties for everyday purposes - passable.I am a master in the
economy of effort; like Harpagon, I measure out every unit of energy to be
expended.I consider myself an expert in medicine, education, eugenics,
politics.Experience has endowed me with an appreciable ability for co-existing
and collaborating even with criminal characters and with born imbeciles.
Ambitious, obstinate fools cut me off their visiting list - though I do not
return the compliment.The last test I passed: tolerated a thoroughly unsuitable
manager in my orphanage for well over a year;acting contrary to the interests of
my own convenience and peace, I sought to persuade her to stay; she soon left of
her own accord (a principle of mine: always prefer the deficiencies of the
present staff to the advantages of the new one).I anticipate that the criminal
characters among the staff of the orphanage at Dzieina Street will voluntarily
resign from the hated work to which they are tied by cowardice and inertia
alone.I graduated from secondary school and university in Warsaw. My education
was complemented in the clinics of Berlin (one year) and Paris (six months). A
month's excursion to London helped me to understand the quintessence of charity
work (a rewarding experience).My masters in medicine were: Professor Przewoski
(anatomy and bacteriology), Nasonow (zoologist), Szczerbakow (psychiatry), and
the pediatricians Rnkelsztein, Baginski, Marfan, Hutinel ( Berlin , Paris).(On a
day off - visits to orphanages, reformatories, places of detention for so-called
juvenile delinquents.) One month in a school for retarded children, one month in
Ziehen's neurological clinic.My masters in the hospital at Sliska Street:Koral,
the cynic and nihilist, the jovial Kramsztyk the serious Gantz, the fine
diagnostician Eliasberg, and also the medical assistant Slizewski and a selfless
nurse, Laja.I expect to meet a few of the kind of Laja in the children's
slaughterhouse (and morgue) at 39 Dzieina Street.Hospital revealed to me how
dignified, mature and sensible children could be when face-to-face with
death.Books on statistics deepened my understanding of the medical art
(statistics taught me the inexorability of logical thinking and unbiased
judgment of fact). Having weighed and measured children for a quarter of a
century, I have become the owner of a priceless collection of graphs - growth
profiles of children at school-age and puberty.With the Jewish child I came in
touch for the first time as an overseer at the Markiewicz summer vacation camp
in Michalowka. Several years of work in a free lending library afforded me rich
observation material
.
