Janasz Korczak

Spotlight

November 20, 1998
Education Seminar Examines Life and Ideals of Janusz Korczak,
a Polish Doctor and Educator, Killed in Treblinka

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Andrea Louie/Richard Coniglione (718) 951-5882

Brooklyn, NY - Dr. Janusz Korczak, together with 200 Jewish children in his Warsaw orphanage, met a tragic death in the Treblinka extermination camp during the Holocaust. The life and work of this devoted doctor, children's advocate, and writer will be the subject of an education seminar at Brooklyn College, "Janusz Korczak: The Legend and the Legacy."

Coming from St. Petersburg to serve as panelists for this special event will be members of the Janusz Korczak Society: Elena Levina, Mikhail Epshtein, Elena Kazakova, and Sergei S. Mikhelson. The moderator will be Gertrude Berger, professor emerita of education at Brooklyn College. As a Fulbright scholar, Professor Berger conducted research in the former Soviet Union.

The seminar, which is open to the public, will be held on Tuesday, December 1, from 2:30 to 4 p.m. in the Student Union Building, Campus Road and East 27th Street.

Sponsored by the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities at Brooklyn College, the seminar is being presented in cooperation with the School of Education, the Department of Judaic Studies, the Children's Studies Program, and philanthropist George Soros's Open Society Institute.

Born Henryk Goldszmit in Warsaw in 1878, Dr. Korczak changed his name and abandoned his middle-class life to devote himself to the city's poor and homeless children. In 1911, he founded an orphanage, Dom Sierot, Polish for "House of the Orphan." There he realized his idea of a democratic republic of children, guided by his principles of a peaceful and classless society. The children had their own parliament, court, and newspaper.

Dr. Korczak wrote such pedagogical books as How You Shall Love a Child and The Right of a Child to be Respected, in which he appealed to adults to relate to children as equals-and ultimately change themselves as well.

After the Nazis occupied Poland during World War II, the orphanage was forced to move into the Jewish ghetto. Although Dr. Korczak had several opportunities to flee and save his own life, he chose to stay with the children, saying that to leave would be traitorous

Dr. Korczak, members of his staff, and the children were sent on a transport to the Treblinka death camp, where, on August 5, they were killed.

Brooklyn College, founded in 1930, is one of the eleven senior colleges of the City University of New York. The school is known nationally for its core curriculum, which has been hailed as one of the "bright spots" in American higher education. Located on a 26-acre tree-lined campus in Flatbush, Brooklyn College has a diverse student body representing more than 70 of the borough's 100 ethnic groups.

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