Abstract
This first and mostly biographical chapter is organized around a number of important dates and experiences in Korczak’s life and times: 1878: his year of birth; 1904: his first and formative experiences as an educator during the summer camps; 1912: the inauguration of the Dom Sierot orphanage in Warsaw, and the subsequent 30 years until 1942: the end, and beyond, Korczak’s ‘reception’. In the later chapters I will return to these experiences and examine them in more detail.
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Notes
- 1.
The quotations that head each section in this chapter are taken from Korczak’s short note ‘Application’ from February 9, 1942, of which the first sentence goes: ‘Kind friends have asked me to write my last will’ (Korczak 1967, li).
- 2.
There is uncertainty about the exact year, due to negligence on the father’s part. The birth certificate has been lost. Most scholars use 1878, and so do I.
- 3.
- 4.
Korczak’s mother died in 1920. He was very much saddened by this loss, and wrote 19 ‘prayers’, or perhaps better: conversations with God. One of them, the prayer of an educator, is in the Appendix of this book.
- 5.
Poland was part of the Russian (Tsarist) Empire, and only became an independent state in 1918.
- 6.
Already in 1899, in a short essay, Korczak (2018b, 95–98) shows his interest in social questions. He devotes attention to Christ’s saying ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’, and he applies this to three oppressed groups in society: the poor, women and children. For an illuminating commentary on Korczak’s social pedagogical view in this essay, see Wyrobnik (2020).
- 7.
Smolinska-Theiss (2018, 26) makes an interesting and important remark about (Korczak’s) being a ‘novice’, when she says that everyone already has some experience related to upbringing; and indeed, we’ve all been children.
- 8.
By this I refer to the conversion of Saul to Paul, on his way to Damascus, as described in Acts 9: 3–9.
- 9.
Every teacher knows the difference between saying ‘you there!’ to a student, and addressing him or her with their own name. And every student also knows the difference.
- 10.
Although much of this material is lost, there still remains so much that gives us insight into Korczak’s views, and working method, and also to his own inner, spiritual life.
- 11.
Unfortunately, this story and its corresponding chart are not reprinted in the new English edition of Korczak’s works.
- 12.
On the responsibility of educators, see Wyrobnik (2017).
- 13.
It is a miracle that this building (present address Jaktorowska 6), which now houses a beautiful exhibition on Korczak, has survived the demolition of Warsaw. The famous author Isaac Bashevis Singer lived in the same street, on number 10, and has written about it in his memories A day of pleasure (Singer 1969).
- 14.
Stefania Wilczyńska was born on May 26, 1886 in Warsaw, and together with Korczak and the orphans from Dom Sierot was murdered in Treblinka on August 5 or 6, 1942. In recent years there is, especially in her homeland, a growing interest in her person and work; it is evident that she was more than the stereotype ‘woman behind a great man’.
- 15.
All in all, Korczak served, as a medic, in three wars: the Russian-Japanese war of 1905, the First World War (1914–1918) and the Polish-Soviet war (1919–1921). As Medvedeva-Nathoo (2018b, 332) writes: ‘Then, in 1939, the winds of the Second World War swept across Europe – for Korczak the fourth and last war.’.
- 16.
In the new edition (Korczak 2018a, 207) it is translated as ‘collegial court’, but this has the disadvantage that the core idea—a court consisting of children—disappears out of sight. I therefore will continue to use ‘children’s court’.
- 17.
I want to stress that ‘republican’ throughout this book does not refer to any political party, but to the (ancient) idea of the ‘res publica’, the common cause or good. It is very meaningful that Korczak’s orphanage Dom Sierot was known as the ‘children’s republic’.
- 18.
This is taken from Korczak’s diary (aka ‘ghetto diary’ or ‘memoirs’) which he kept from May till August 4, 1942, the day (or two days) before the orphanage’s inhabitants were marched away.
- 19.
The green flag comes from the King Matt stories, and is still used by many korczakian youth groups around the world.
- 20.
- 21.
‘For the world today, Janusz Korczak is a symbol of true religion and true morality’, Pope John Paul II, quoted in Joseph 1999.
- 22.
See Newerly (1967) for an account of the history of this copy.
- 23.
For a retrospective of the reception of Korczak and his pedagogy in Germany, see Engemann-Reinhard (2013).
- 24.
Two famous examples of these are Korczak and the children, by Erwin Sylvanus, 1957 (or. German), and Korczak, the film by the Polish director Andrzej Wajda, from 1990.
- 25.
- 26.
The IKA is on Facebook.
- 27.
In many countries academic and professional research on Korczak is being done within institutions for higher learning, as part of research and/or teaching programmes (see, i.e. Tsyrlina-Spady 2018); in some, such as Poland and Israel there are research institutions exclusively devoted to his life and work.
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Berding, J.W.A. (2020). The Ethos: Living with and for Children. In: Janusz Korczak. SpringerBriefs in Education(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59250-9_1
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