25 Facts About Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak, the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit, was a Polish Jewish pediatrician, educator, children's author and pedagogue known as Pan Doktor or Stary Doktor.

Janusz Korczak was an early children's rights advocate, in 1919 drafting a children's constitution.

Janusz Korczak was executed when the entire population of the institution was sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during the Grossaktion Warschau of 1942.

Janusz Korczak was unsure of his birth date, which he attributed to his father's failure to promptly acquire a birth certificate for him.

Janusz Korczak's parents were Jozef Goldszmit, a respected lawyer from a family of proponents of the haskalah, and Cecylia nee Gebicka, daughter of a prominent Kalisz family.

Janusz Korczak did not believe in forcing religion on children.

Janusz Korczak's father fell ill around 1890 and was admitted to a mental hospital, where he died six years later on 25 April 1896.

Janusz Korczak's orphanage was supported by the CENTOS Polish-Jewish charity.

Between 1934 and 1936, Janusz Korczak travelled every year to Mandate Palestine and visited its kibbutzim.

Janusz Korczak stayed in Poland and continued his role as headmaster.

In 1939, when World War II erupted, Janusz Korczak volunteered for duty in the Polish Army but was refused due to his age.

Janusz Korczak had been offered sanctuary on the "Aryan side" by the Polish underground organization Zegota, but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children.

Janusz Korczak boarded the trains with the children, around 200 of them, and some 12 staff including Stefania Wilczynska, and was never heard from again.

Janusz Korczak told the orphans they were going out into the country, so they ought to be cheerful.

Janusz Korczak told them to wear their best clothes, and so they came out into the yard, two by two, nicely dressed and in a happy mood.

Janusz Korczak was a lifelong bachelor and had no biological children of his own.

Janusz Korczak's best known writing is his fiction and pedagogy, and his most popular works have been widely translated.

The copyright to all works by Janusz Korczak was acquired by The Polish Book Institute, a cultural institution and publishing house affiliated with the Polish government.

In 2012 the institute's rights were challenged by the Modern Poland Foundation, whose goal was to establish by court trial that Janusz Korczak died in 1942 so that Janusz Korczak's works would be available in the public domain as of 1 January 2013.

Janusz Korczak often employed the form of a fairy tale in order to prepare his young readers for the dilemmas and difficulties of real adult life, and the need to make responsible decisions.

In 2012, another book by Janusz Korczak was translated into English.

Janusz Korczak's The Persistent Boy was a biography of the French scientist Louis Pasteur, adapted for children - as stated in the preface - from a 685-page French biography that Janusz Korczak read.

Janusz Korczak's ideas were further developed by many other pedagogues such as Simon Soloveychik and Erich Dauzenroth.

Janusz Korczak spoke against corporal punishment of children at a time when such treatment was considered a parental entitlement or even a duty.

Janusz Korczak is commemorated in a number of monuments and plaques in Poland, mainly in Warsaw.