​​​"To reform the world is to reform education"
(Korczak, Confession of a Butterfly, 1914)

 

Janusz Korczak inspires educators all over the world in his understanding of children and childhood years. In the following pages we try to give a glimpse of his legacy.

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Most people who heard about Korczak know him through the last chapter of his life - his march with his children to the train that took them on August 5th, 1942, from the Warsaw Jewish ghetto to Treblinka. This heroic end overshaddows nearly 40 years of educational work and writings. Here we will try to go back and shed light on his legacy as a whole.

 

Korczak (Henrick Goldsmidt in his birth name) was a total educator (never a school teacher), a social activist, philosopher, pedeiatician and writer. His immanent pedagogy sees the child as part of infinity; his childhood years are important as any other stage of life and deserve our full respect.

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Much of the materialls I use here I got from my work with the Ghetto Fighters Museum which became the center of Korczak's story in Israel.