Janusz Korczak (22 July 1878-7 August 1942) was a Polish-Jewish educator who was murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.
Biography[]
Henryk Goldszmit was born in Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire in 1878, and he came from a Jewish family; he later became an agnostic. In 1898, he assumed the nom de plume "Janusz Korczak" for a literary contest, and he wrote for several Polish-language newspapers before becoming a pediatrician and serving as an Imperial Russian Army military doctor during the Russo-Japanese War. In 1912, he became director of an orphanage in Warsaw, forming a parliament, court, and newspaper for his children. He returned to his service as a military doctor during World War I, and he served as a Polish Army major during the Polish-Soviet War. During the 1930s, he hosted a radio show in which he popularized the rights of children, and, from 1934 to 1936, he annually visited Mandatory Palestine and its kibbutzim. He ultimately refused to emigrate to Palestine and leave his children behind, and he thus remained in Warsaw. The elderly Korczak attempted to volunteer for the Polish Army at the start of World War II, but his application was rejected. On 6 August 1942, he and his 192 orphans were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp, and they were murdered in a gas chamber on their arrival.