What had shaped Korczak’s literary sensitivity? He read huge amounts of books in his early childhood, and, as a teenager, he followed Kraszewski’s work (see point 3), as well as Goethe’s Faust, and works by Victor Hugo, Zapolska, and Sienkiewicz. One of the fascinations from this early period which would stick with him for life was Tyrteusz by Władysław Ludwik Anczyc. Later, pedagogical and medical works were added to his library, but also The Capital by Marx. In 1898, he chose medicine as his area of study, and later effectively become a doctor. In Spowiedź motyla (Confession of a Butterfly) his alter-ego states that ‘literature is words, medicine is deeds’. Yet, he was always also a writer, and he took great care for his words to become deeds, for them to have an impact on the world, transforming it.
5. Korczak – a decadent? Korczak’s years of study were also the era of a tumultuous friendship with Ludwik Stanisław Liciński. The latter, a poet and writer, died at a young age before making himself known as the author of decadent stories which depicted the margins of society. Korczak and he would go out on night-time escapades, peeking into the dangerous corners of the Old Town and Powiśle – it was there that the doomed poet and the future pedagogue immersed themselves in the world of prostitutes, pimps, crooks, and drunks. Liciński described the escapades with Korczak in the following words:
We visited brothels and bars together, we wandered across the sandy shores of the Vistula river, we celebrated prostitutes’ birthdays, we got drunk on stinky vodka with muggers.
Liciński left behind a portrait of Korczak, a character named Janusz, in his short story entitled Dziwne rzeczy (Strange Things) in the Halucynacje (Hallucinations) series. Liciński died of tuberculosis in 1908, at the age of 34.
6. Korczak at war Janusz Korczak in front of the Orphan's House in 92 Krochmalna St, Warsaw, ca. 1938-39, photo courtesy of the Korczakianum Centre for Documentation and Research in Warsaw Korczak’s youthful years as a student seem to have been interrupted by his participation in the Japanese-Russian war of 1905. He was enlisted into the army as part of the last wave of recruits, in June 1905, when the war had practically been lost. After a long journey, he found himself in Harbin, Manchuria, close to the Chinese border. Inside train wagons transformed into field hospital rooms, Korczak worked as an army doctor. But even during those war years, Korczak was always himself, always sensitive to the fate of children. He recalled buying a beating rod off a sadistic Chinese teacher in one of the villages – it would later serve as a skipping rope for children at his Orphans’ Home. Korczak’s return to Poland from the war was postponed, and on his journey back, he witnessed the utter chaos and slackness accompanying the outburst of the revolution in Russia. On his way back, during a workers’ rally in a town in Russia, he made a speech in which he draws attention to the meaning of childhood in human life. He finally arrived in Poland as late as March, 1906.
The Japanese-Russian war was the first armed conflict in which the future pedagogue took part. Later came the First World War, during which Korczak was the younger chief physician at a field hospital of Samsonov’s army division. His work called Dziecko w rodzinie (The Child in the Family), the first part of the Jak kochać dziecko (How to Love a Child) tetralogy was written during this period, ‘inside the field hospital, beneath the canons’ thunder’, as he himself commented. During a short vacation in 1915, Korczak made a journey to Kiev, where he met Maria (Maryna) Falska with whom he would later closely collaborate in Nasz Dom (see point 7 and 8). This time, it would take four years for Korczak to return to Warsaw, where he arrived in 1918.
In the winter of 1920, Korczak was relegated to work as an army doctor during the Polish-Bolshevik war of 1919-1921. At the epidemiological hospital in Kamionek, he contracted typhoid. His beloved mother took care of him at home and died after catching the disease from her son. Korczak recovered. After a period of recuperation (from August 1920 through to March 1921), he got other military allocations. It was also the last military conflict in which Korczak participated as a member of the army. On 31st December, 1938, due to his age, he was relieved from general military duty. In spite of this, during the first days of the war, as part of his own patriotic stance, Korczak walked around Warsaw dressed in a military uniform which he ordered especially for the occasion.
7. Korczak’s orphanages – how many were there? The Orphans’ Home on 92 Krochmalna street (presently 6 Jaktorowska street), around 1935; photo: Korczakianum From 1905, after finishing his studies, Korczak continued to work at the Hospital of Baumans and Bersons on 51 Śliska Street (presently 60 Sienna Street). Simultaneously, he conducted his own private practice for young patients. A new chapter in Korczak’s life opened on 14th June, 1911, when the cornerstone for the Orphans’ Home building was laid on 92 Krochmalna Street. This was the result of numerous efforts by the Pomoc dla Sierot (Aid for Orphans) Society, whose board Korczak was also a member of. The building (which still stands today, housing an orphanage and the Korczakianum Documentation and the Research Centre Department of the History Museum of Warsaw, on present-day Jaktorowska Street) was opened on 7th October, 1912 and it was founded with money raised by wealthy Jewish inhabitants of Warsaw – philanthropists and industry investors. From that moment on and for the next 30 years Korczak would devote himself to running the Orphans’ Home on Krochmalna Street (even if its address would change).
In early November, 1940, one year after the creation of the ghetto, together with Ms. Stefa and his children, Korczak was forced to leave Krochmalna (which now found itself outside of the ghetto) and to transfer into a building of the State Trade School on 33 Chłodna Street. A year later, in late October 1941, due to yet another transformation within the closed-off district, the Orphans’ Home moved again. This time the Home relocated to a building on 16 Sienna/9 Śliska Street, close to Bersons’ Hospital, where Korczak had spent much of his youth. The last time the children had to move together with their teachers was on August 5th, 1942 – when they went out onto the Umschlagplatz.
