Janusz Korczak (the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit) was a Polish Jewish doctor and educator who worked with and for children, an author, social activist and founder of orphanages for Polish and Jewish children. He was an early children’s rights advocate; 1919 he drafted a children’s constitution. During the 1930s he hosted a radio program, where he promoted the rights of children. At his peak, his children’s books were as famous throughout the world as Peter Pan.
He ran a house for Jewish orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1940, when the Nazis closed the Ghetto to the outside world, he rejected an offer for personal sanctuary and chose to stay with the children. In 1942 the home was closed and its employees and about 200 pupils were transported to the Treblinka concentration camp and executed.
Although the idea of erecting a monument to Janusz Korczak arose right after the war, it was not until 1999, on the initiative of the Shalom Foundation and Janusz Korczak Polish Association, that fundraising began. An international design competition was won by Bohdan Chmielewski and Zbigniew Wilma. The cornerstone was placed in 2003 by the Mayor of Warsaw. The monument was unveiled in 2006, on June 1, International Children’s Day. It is located in Świętokrzyski Park near the site of his orphanage. Every year, on Children’s Day, trips from Warsaw schools go to the monument.
The inscription reads:
JANUSZ KORCZAK
DR HENRYK GOLDSZMIT
1878-1942
The monument shows Janusz Korczak, surrounded by a group of children standing under a dead tree whose dry branches form a menorah. The figures are made of bronze, the tree of granite tree. It is on an artificial hill, covered with paving stones.
Other monuments to Janusz Korczak include a statue of him and the children at the Jewish Cemetery on Okopowa Street in Warsaw, which serves as his symbolic grave (on left) and one at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (right.)
