Janusz Korczak, the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit (22 July 1878, or 1879 – 7 August 1942), was a Polish Jewish pediatrician, educator, children's author and pedagogue known as Pan Doktor ("Mr. Doctor") or Stary Doktor ("Old Doctor"). He was an early children's rights advocate, drafting a children's constitution in 1919.
After spending many years working as a principal of an orphanage in Warsaw, he moved in with his orphans when the orphanage was forced to move to the city's Jewish ghetto, despite pleas from friends to flee the country. He was murdered when the entire population of the institution was sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during the Nazi deportation campaign of 1942.
Korczak was born in Warsaw. He was unsure of his birth date, which is attributed to his father's failure to promptly acquire a birth certificate for him; his birth date is 22 July of either 1878 or 1879. His parents were Józef Goldszmit, a respected lawyer from a family of proponents of the Haskalah, and Cecylia Gębicka, daughter of a prominent Kalisz family.
Henryk's father fell ill around 1890 and was admitted to a mental hospital, where he died six years later, on 25 April 1896. As his family's financial situation worsened, they were forced to give up spacious apartments in Warsaw's Old Town. While he was still attending the gymnasium (the current 8th Lycée in Warsaw), Henryk began to work as a tutor for other pupils. In 1896, he debuted on the literary scene with a satirical piece about raising children, Węzeł gordyjski (The Gordian Knot).
In 1898, he used Janusz Korczak as a pen name in the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Literary Contest. The name originated from the book Historia o Janaszu Korczaku i o pięknej miecznikównie by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski. In the 1890s he studied in the Flying University. During the years 1898–1904 or March 1905 Korczak studied medicine at the University of Warsaw. He also wrote for several Polish language newspapers. After graduation, he served as a military doctor during the Russo-Japanese War. Subsequently, he became a pediatrician working at Bersohns and Baumans Children's Hospital in Warsaw, where he worked from 1905 to 1912. Meanwhile, his novels Children of the Street (Dzieci ulicy, 1901) Child of the Drawing Room (Dziecko salonu, 1906 ) gained him recognition as a writer.
In 1907, Korczak went to study in Berlin, and in 1909, to Paris.
In 1907 or 1909 (sources vary) he joined the Towarzystwo „Pomoc dla sierot" (Help for Orphans Society or Help for Orphans Association). There in 1909 he met Stefania Wilczyńska, his future close associate and long-time associate.
In 1911, he became a director of Dom Sierot (Orphan House) in Warsaw, an orphanage of his own design for Jewish children, which opened the following year.
During World War I, in 1914 Korczak was once again conscripted as a military doctor, serving near Kiev as surgeon in the Russian Army (with 4th Infantry Division) with the rank of lieutenant until 1917. At that time he also worked in orphanages near Kiev.
He served again as a military doctor in the Polish Army with the rank of major during the Polish-Soviet War (1919–1920), but after a brief stint in Łódź was assigned to Warsaw. In the Polish military he reached the rank of a major.
After the war, he continued his practice in Warsaw. In his 1919 book Jak kochać dziecko (How to Love a Child), written during the war, he defined three basic rights of the child: the right of today, the right of the child over its own death, and the right of the child to be what it wants to be.
In 1919 he cofounded the orphanage Nasz Dom (Our House). His orphanages taught democratic and civic values: they had their own parliament, a code of law with a court, and a newspaper. The latter was formed in 1926 when Korczak arranged for the children of the Dom Sierot to begin their own newspaper, the Mały Przegląd (The Little Review), as a weekly attachment to the daily Polish-Jewish newspaper Nasz Przegląd (Our Review). In these years, his secretary was the Polish novelist Igor Newerly. His orphanage was supported by the CENTOS Polish-Jewish charity.
During the 1930s, he had his own radio program, where he promoted and popularized the rights of children. The popularity of his books and radio show gained him literary recognition and widespread popularity; he was engaged in various activities, serving on boards of several organizations, and delivering public lectures.
Between 1934 and 1936, Korczak travelled every year to Mandate Palestine and visited its kibbutzim. In 1937 he reduced his involvement with Nasz Dom. A letter he wrote indicates that he had some intentions to move to Palestine, but in the end, he felt he could not leave his children behind.
In 1939, when World War II erupted, Korczak volunteered for duty in the Polish Army but was refused due to his age. When the Germans created the Warsaw Ghetto in October 1940, his orphanage was forced to move from its building, Dom Sierot at Krochmalna 92, to the ghetto (first to Chłodna 33 and later to Sienna 16 / Śliska 9). Korczak moved in with them, trying his best to keep the orphanage running. Together with his staff and pupils, they staged plays and concerts for the ghetto inhabitants. On 18 July. 1942, Janusz Korczak decided that the children in the orphanage should put on Rabindranath Tagore's play The Post Office. This would be their last play.
Korczak's diary survived the war; the last entry in it is from 4 August. On 5 or 6 (sources vary) August 1942, German soldiers came to collect the 192 orphans (there is some debate about the actual number: it may have been 196) and about one dozen staff members to transport them to the Treblinka extermination camp. Korczak had been offered sanctuary on the "Aryan side" by the Polish underground organization Żegota, but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children. On 5 August, he again refused offers of sanctuary, insisting that he would go with the children, asserting his belief: "You do not leave a sick child in the night, and you do not leave children at a time like this".
The children were dressed in their best clothes, and each carried a blue knapsack and a favorite book or toy. Joshua Perle, an eyewitness whose wartime writings were saved in the Ringelblum Archive, described the procession of Korczak and the children through the ghetto to the Umschlagplatz (deportation point to the death camps):
Janusz Korczak was marching, his head bent forward, holding the hand of a child, without a hat, a leather belt around his waist, and wearing high boots. A few nurses were followed by two hundred children, dressed in clean and meticulously cared for clothes, as they were being carried to the altar.