"Korczak's Last Walk" - Relief sculpture by Nathan Rapoport.
It refers to the dark day on August 5th 1942, when the Nazis took Janusz Korczak, Stefa Wilczynska, ten teachers and Orphanage workers and 239 children from the Orphanage Dom Sierot at 16 Sienna street to the Umschlagsplatz and death camp Treblinka.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
by Rabbi Elliot J. Cosgrove
Parashat Sh’mini/Yom HaShoah
When you leave the synagogue today, pause to look at the bronze relief on the front façade of the building above the Madison Avenue entrance. At the center of the Nathan Rapoport sculpture is Janus Korczak; surrounding him are children gripping his arms and legs, each one with a look of terror on his or her face. Born Henryk Goldzmit, Dr. Janusz Korczak was a famed Polish-Jewish educator, a combination Mister Rogers and Dr. Spock of his time. His academic work in child psychology and education and the orphanages established and modeled on his principles continue to be subjects of study to this day. The Rapoport sculpture depicts what is referred to as “Korczak’s Last Walk” that dark day on August 5, 1942, when the Nazis took Korczak and the children of his orphanage to the Umschlagsplatz, along with thousands of others, to board the cattle cars to Treblinka. During 1942, Hitler decided to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto, deporting some 230,000 (375 000) Jews to the concentration (death) camps.
I cannot help but appreciate the decision of our synagogue’s past leadership to put the Korczak sculpture where it is. If one understands the mission of this synagogue, as I do, to be to preserve our Jewish heritage and pass it on to our children, then every time you walk into this building, every time you enter this space, you are making a statement that the Nazis’ hoped for victory – the Final Solution – will never come to pass. Nobody can bring back the hundreds of thousands of children who perished, but every time you are here, every young man or woman who emerges from this community, every Jew and non-Jew who comes into the orbit of this institution and what it represents – all of these are thundering statements that the values of Korczak, his children, those murdered in the Warsaw Ghetto and all the Six Million live on.
