Cover of the French "Journal du ghetto"
Parisian Centre Medem is organsing a special ceremony to honour the combatants of the Warsaw Ghetto and pay homage to the victims of World War II. At the event fragments of Andrzej Wajda’s film Korczak are to be screened - a biographical picture is based on Korczak's The Ghetto Diary, recently released in French by the Robert Laffont publishing house
Rémi Féraud, the mayor of Paris’ 10th district hosts such a commemorative event each year at the Centre Medem and the Clej (Le Club laïque de l'enfance juive, Secular Club of Jewish Chilhood). In 2012, the event is co-organised by the Polish Institute in Paris as well as the Polish Embassy.
Andrzej Wajda’s film is a study of the great Polish-Jewish pedagogue’s life and work. Korczak’s screenplay was written by Agnieszka Holland, and Wojciech Kilar composed the picture’s musical score. The figure of Janusz Korczak was played by the prominent Polish actor Wojciech Pszoniak.
Wajda and Holland based the story of the film on the testimony of the great pedagogue, written during the time he spent in the Warsaw Ghetto. It is the last work by Janusz Korczak, written as he struggled for survival - his own as well as that of the children who lived with him in the Ghetto. Korczak was one of the few people living in the ghetto to be allowed to freely enter and go out of the horrendous quarter's walls. He could have saved himself from a certain death but consciously decided to accompany the group of orphans in his care, aged from 3 to 13 years old to their extermination by the nazis.
Following the premiere translation of the book into French in 2007, a new edition of The Ghetto Diary was recently released by the Robert Laffont publishing house on the 5th of January, 2012. The French title of the book is Journal du ghetto, and it includes diary entries as well as all of Korczak’s correspondence written during the months spent in the occupied quarter. The Journal is also enriched with new witness material, which has recently mysteriously surfaced in an anonymous way.
The main body of the Diary was written between May and August of 1942. During night hours Korczak chronicled his life in the occupied quarters and recorded an intimate reflection on his own fading life. The journal is broken off on the 4th of August, 1942. Two days later, together with his proteges and Stefania Wilczyńska Korczak headed for the Umschlagplatz, from where they were taken to the concentration camp in Treblinka and gassed.
The typescript of the diary miraculously survived, after it was carried out of the ghetto and bricked up in the walls of the Nasz Dom orphanage, an institution co-founded by Korczak before the war. A close collaborator and a friend of the pedagogue, Igor Newerly took care of the script. Although it was first released in 1958, this remarkable text remains largely unknown even to specialist researchers of the Holocaust.
Joël Jégouzo writes in his review of Le journal du ghetto published on urbuz.com
Janusz Korczak, the great pedagogue whose name is associated with martyrdom of Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto, was for a long time rather reluctant to write a private diary. In spite of pressure from all sides, at the height of his fame, he could not bring himself together to take up this genre, which he qualified as a “sinister and oppressive literature”. And even once he agreed to it, in the few final years and with a full awareness of his heroic fate (he was 60 when he started writing the journal), he never entirely abode by the rules of the genre, quickly orienting his remarks around the suffering humanity for which he accepted to make his own sacrifice. Indeed, although Jewish, Korczak could have known a different fate, thanks to his international fame. He could have for exemple fled from the ghetto, which he was free to go out of whenever he pleased. Until the end, fighting to better the destiny of the 200 orphans who he knew were bound to be exterminated, he preferred to accompany them to Treblinka one fateful August day of 1942 - rather than to survive them in order to witness that which could no longer be witnessed. "There are problems which resemble a pile of bloody rags tossed and abandoned in the middle of the street"- this is what Korczak confronted himself with a rarely met wisdom and serenity. With no illusion regarding humanity - American journalists who passed by the ghetto, disappointed at not finding mountains of children’s corpses that they could photograph, completely disabused him.
The new French edition of the Diary was translated by Zofia Bobowicz, an outstanding translator of Polish literature and a promulgator of Janusz Korczak’s legacy in France. Some of his books translated by Bobowicz include How to Love a Child / Comment Aimer Un Enfant, The Child’s Right to Respect / De Le Droit De L'enfant Au Respect and Le roi Mathias Ier / King Matt the First.
In an article entitled O obecności Janusza Korczaka we Francji / On the Presence of Janusz Korczak in France, published by the Instytut Książki (Book Institute) website, Zofia Bobowicz reminds us of the French origins of the international Korczak movement:
Most likely few people in Poland are familiar with the history of the international Korczak movement, which now has its centres in numerous European countries as well as African and Asian cities. This movement was in fact started up in France in the 1970s, by a couple of Jewish doctors from Poland who were convinced of the universal value of Janusz Korczak’s educational methods. They decided to found an association called Les Amis du Docteur Janusz Korczak.
(...) Thanks to Les Amis’ initiative, an international conference devoted to Janusz Korczak took place in UNESCO headquarters, and the International Janusz Korczak Association was founded in 1979. (...) Member countries of the association included East and West Germany, Israel, Sweden, Switzerland, and Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy, the USSR and the USA soon followed. (...)
Zofia Bobowicz remarks that the dissertations presented by Korczak’s pupils and collaborators as part of the conference had numeorous echoes in France, and that up until the 1990s the interest in the legacy of the Polish pedagogue in France had been constantly rising. Pitying the fact that few new editions of Korczak’s work were released afterwards, Bobowicz is all the more enthusiastic about the new initiative taken up by the Fabert publishing house.
Fabert, which specialises in publications devoted to education and psychology is run by Thomas Jallaud since 1992. In 2009, as part of the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Jallaud honoured Janusz Korczak through publishing his The Child's Right to Respect together with the full text of the Convention, Korczak’s biography and the full list of Korczak's works. Following the enthusiastic reception of the publication, Fabert has recently launched a new series entitled Janusz Korczak, devoted entirely to the Polish pedagogue.
Cover of "Le droit de l'enfant au respect"
The following titles were released as part of the series:
Le droit de l'enfant au respect / The Child’s Right to Respect (2009), De la pédagogie avec humour / Playful Pedagogy, Les Règles de la vie - Pédagogie pour les jeunes et les adultes, Kaytek le Magicien / Kaytek the Wizard, and a new translation of Le Roi Mathias 1er / King Matt the First.
The prestigious Seuil publishing company has also released Korczak’s Seul à seul avec Dieu, ou, Prières de ceux qui ne prient jamais (One on One with God or the Prayers of Those Who Never Pray) as part of its Points Sagesses series in 1997.
In 2006, Robert Laffont, the publisher of the aforementioned Le journal du ghetto, also released Comment aimer un enfant suivi de Le droit de l'enfant au respect (How to Love a Child, according to The Child’s Right to Respect). That same year, another specifically educational company also released Korczak’s Les Moments pédagogiques : Suivi de Moment du journal et journal des moments.
In 2012 Poland celebrates the life and works of Henryk Goldszmit, better known by his pseudonym Janusz Korczak. Although he is remembered primarily for his contributions to education as a significant authority in custodial pedagogy, he was also an accomplished writer, taking on a range of literary forms to pursue varied social topics, from medicine and pedagogy to hygiene, politics and interpersonal relationships. The Korczak Year ushers in a series of events and publications in honour of his contribution to literature and science. Two separate dates in Janusz Korczak's life are commemorated as part of the Year, the 70th anniversary of his death at the Treblinka camp during the war and the 100th anniversary of his founding the House of Orphans in Krochmalna street in Warsaw (currently Jaktorowska street). In September 2011, the Polish Parliament passed a resolution declaring the year 2012 the Janusz Korczak Year at the initiative of Marek Michalak, the Ombudsman for Children in Poland.
The 2012 celebrations on the 19th of April take place at Le Centre Medem:
Le Centre Medem
Mairie du Xe arrondissment de Paris
72 rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin 75010 Paris
tel. 01 53 72 10 10
The entry is free of charge
Source: press release, www.institutpolonais.fr, urbuz.com, culture.pl