BBC journalist and broadcaster Reeta Chakrabarti chooses Janusz Korczak as a history hero <\/p>
Janusz Korczak, born Henryk Goldszmit, was a Polish Jewish educator and children\u2019s author, and the founder and director of two Warsaw orphanages, one for Jewish children. He insisted on accompanying the Jewish children to the ghetto and then to Treblinka extermination camp, where all were murdered by the Nazis. A monument to Korczak stands in the Jewish Cemetery on Okopowa Street in Warsaw.<\/p>\n
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I wandered into an exhibition about him in Rome, and was overcome by the heroism of this ordinary man. I say ordinary \u2013 he was actually quite well known as a children\u2019s author and an educator, but nothing can have prepared him for the decisions he had to take.<\/p>\n
Korczak trained as a medical doctor, but became a children\u2019s author and teacher. He ran two orphanages in Warsaw \u2013 one for Jewish children, the other for Catholics. A liberal and progressive thinker, he set up a children\u2019s \u201crepublic\u201d in the Jewish orphanage, with its own parliament, court and newspaper. He suffered deprivation and danger for the sake of the children in his care, and ultimately chose to die with them, despite being given the opportunity to save himself.<\/p>\n
His bravery and his loyalty to the children. After the Germans created the Warsaw Ghetto<\/a> in 1940, Korczak\u2019s Jewish orphanage was forced to move into it. He went with the children, though he\u2019d been offered shelter elsewhere. He stayed with them until August 1942, when he was sent to Treblinka with some 200 children and staff. They were never heard of again; it\u2019s assumed they all perished in the gas chambers.<\/p>\n When he led the children to the train to Treblinka, described movingly by eyewitnesses. The composer W\u0142adys\u0142aw Szpilman recalled that Korczak told the orphans to be glad, because they were going to the countryside and would be free of the suffocating city. He wanted to spare them the terror of death.<\/p>\n Yes! Korczak should be remembered alongside people such as Sir Nicholas Winton<\/a>, Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler<\/a>. They managed to save lives, but Korczak sacrificed his, refusing to abandon his children on their final journey.<\/p>\n On the podcast | Rebecca Clifford tells the stories of child survivors of the Holocaust:<\/strong><\/p>\nWhat was Korczak\u2019s finest hour?<\/h3>\n
Does he deserve greater recognition in the UK?<\/h3>\n