jewishsocialist:

whosafraidofcharlottewolff:

Happy birthday, Janusz Korczak- you would have been 134 today. 

For anyone who does not know who he is, please keep reading. He is by far my favorite historical figure, and perhaps one of my favorite people ever to have existed. Few great people are also good, but he was. 

There is no one in the world I admire more. Before World War II, he was known in Poland as a doctor-turned-teacher who was the first to advocate the belief that children were worthy of respect, their feelings were as valid as the feelings of adults, that they deserved to be talked to instead of being talked down to.  He spent his life radically changing  and modernizing the Polish education system, teaching at almost every level, and writing children’s books and books of educational theory (the latter he mostly denounced, saying that you shouldn’t ‘try to become teachers overnight with educational theory in your head and psychological bookkeeping in your heart’).  He was quirky and awkward around adults – there are many hilarious  accounts of his dealings with most people- but no one understood kids better.  In his old age, he opened orphanages and implemented his ideas there. 

When World War II started, as a Jew, he was no longer allowed to work in Gentile orphanages. So instead he ran a Jewish one in Warsaw. At the beginning of the war, he practiced active resistance,  running down streets with giant flags of Polish and Jewish pride at eighty years old, and refusing to wear the Star of David. Only out of concern for what his children would do without him, did he stop. Once he and the orphanage were forced into the Warsaw ghetto, he resisted by making the orphanage the happiest place in the ghetto, full of life and theater and love, as he tried to make life as normal as possible- and at the same time, try to prepare the children for the worst.

When the worst came and the children were to be rounded up to be killed, despite many attempts by the Jewish Underground to rescue him, and despite not having to go himself as an adult, he went with them to their deaths, giving up his life so that he could give them a few last moments of comfort before they died. Observers say that the children were calm and even happy as they walked, because of Korczak.

You are my hero, Janusz Korczak. Rest in peace.

“One does not leave a sick child at night, and one does not leave children at a time like this.” – Janusz Korczak

I’m legit angry that I was never taught about this guy.