Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 8480 Plough Quarterly • Spring 2016 “I am not here to be loved and admired. It is not the duty of people to help me, but it is my duty to look after the world and the people in it.”  —Janusz Korczak T he date of birth for the Polish educator is unclear: a result of the fact that his father, a well-to-do Jewish citizen of Warsaw, delayed filling the birth registration paperwork (it was either 1878 or 1879). Also unclear is the date of Korczak’s death, which – like that of millions of others murdered in Nazi extermination camps – went unrecorded. He was last seen on August 6, 1942 in Warsaw, when, having rejected repeated offers to escape, he accompanied a group of around two hundred Jewish orphans to the train that would take them to the Treblinka extermination camp. As a young man, Korczak, whose real name was Henryk Goldszmit, was known for his sensitivity to the suffering of the marginalized. In particular, he seemed to be a magnet for street children, for whom he became a lifelong advocate as a doctor, author, and educator. Taking the nom de plume Janusz Korczak from a character in a children’s story, he promoted his ideals of progressive education in a series of books that combined new insights from child psychology with straightforward love for children. As he wrote: Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today. They are entitled to be taken seri- ously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect, as equals. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be. . . . The unknown person inside each of them is the hope for the future. Korczak was more than a theorist. In 1911, he and his co-worker Stefania Wilczynska estab- lished the Dom Sierot orphanage for Jewish children in Warsaw. As a creative environment where children could flourish, Korczak’s orphanage even included the children’s own parliament, court, and newspaper. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Korczak was determined to protect his orphans and refused to go underground. Even when the children were interned in the Warsaw ghetto, he chose to stay with them: “You wouldn’t abandon your own child in sickness, misfor- tune, or danger, would you? So how can I leave two hundred children now?” Starving and often ill, he spent the last two years of his life protecting his charges as best he could. When in August 1942 the order came down for the orphans to be transported to Treblinka, Korczak and Wilczynska knew what it meant. Telling the children they were headed to a new home in the country, he led them in a festive procession to the train station, each child neatly dressed and carrying a favorite toy or book. In the words of one eyewitness: “I will never forget the sight to the end of my life. It was a silent but organized protest against the murders, a march which no human eye had ever seen before.” The two teachers died with the children in the gas chambers shortly after their arrival in Treblinka. Just days beforehand, Korczak had written in his diary: “I am angry with nobody. I do not wish anyone evil. I am unable to do so.”  Jason Landsel is the artist for Plough’s “Forerunners” series, including Janusz Korczak’s portrait opposite. For e ru n n e r s Janusz Korczak J A S O N L A N D S E L Sources: Janusz Korczak’s Ghetto Diary (Yale University Press, 2003) and When I Am Little Again and The Child’s Right to Respect (UPA, 1992); Betty Jean Lifton’s The King of Children: The Life and Death of Janusz Korczak (St. Martin’s Press, 1997).