Monday, May 21, 2018

The month of May is cold this year, And tonight is the quietest of all nights wrote Korczak in 1942



A few weeks after Bloody Friday*, Janusz Korczak sat up in bed and turned to the diary.
He wrote:
The month of May is cold this year, And tonight is the quietest of all nights. it is five in the morning. The little ones are asleep. There are actually two hundred of them. In the east wing-Madame Stefa, and I in the west-in the so-called 'isolation ward.' "

Later he wrote:
It is half past six.
In the dormitory someone shouts:
"Boys, time for a bath" get up!" I put away my pen. Should I get up or not? It is a long time since I have had a bath. Yesterday I killed a louse I found on myself without batting an eye-with one dexterous squeeze of the nail-a louse.
If I have time, I shall write a eulogy to a louse. For our attitude toward this fine insect is unjust and unfitting.
An embittered Russian peasant once declared: " A louse is not like a man, it will not suck up every last drop of blood."


* Bloody Friday - April 18th, 1942, an execution of printers and distributors of Ghetto undercover press. Emanuel Ringelblum blames Kohn and Heller that were coworking with Germans.