The Anatomy of Silence and the Cry at 39 Dzielna Street: What Janusz Korczak’s Employee Lists Teach Us
A contrast of two worlds: wordless trust at Krochmalna Street versus ruthless moral classification in the Dzielna Street "Death house."
In the post-war biographical research of Janusz Korczak, there lies a striking yet rarely noticed archival paradox. When reviewing the Doctor’s surviving correspondence with educators, bursars, and staff, the vast majority of letters and documents pertain to those who left—emigrating to Palestine or moving to other cities. Of those who stood at their posts at the Orphans’ Home at 92 Krochmalna Street for many long years, almost no papers, reports, or official exchanges remain.
Why? Because at Krochmalna, communication took place directly, face-to-face. Korczak knew exactly where everyone stood. There existed an absolute, organic trust that required no bureaucratic footprint. In the early reports of the "Help for Orphans" Society, one can see in black and white how minimal, yet brilliant, this ecosystem was. For approximately 100 children, there were only 3 permanent physical staff members: a laundress, a stoker, and a cook. These individuals, whose warm descriptions only surfaced years later in the pages of his Diary, formed a single, harmonious family alongside Korczak and Stefania Wilczyńska. No one needed monitoring. The children were the subjects; the adults were their shield.
The Shock at 39 Dzielna Street: Entering a Bureaucratic Hell
It must have been an immense moral and professional shock for the Old Doctor when, in May 1941, he assumed the directorship of the Main Shelter at 39 Dzielna Street—a massive, forced Judenrat institution for foundlings and orphans, which was, in reality, a death house for children.
The contrast in numbers was staggering and exposed the paralysis of the system. While at Krochmalna a handful of people managed a hundred children, at 39 Dzielna Street, hundreds, and at times thousands*, of starving infants and toddlers were crammed together, surrounded by a monstrous, bureaucratized army of staff. Attempting to diagnose this moral chaos, where food and milk were stolen at the expense of dying infants, Korczak approached the matter like an epidemiologist. He did what he never had to do at Krochmalna—he compiled long, detailed lists of employees, ruthlessly dividing them into 4 psychological and moral categories:
- Category I: Predators and Thieves – individuals completely devoid of conscience who viewed the shelter as a feeding ground. They stole bread rations, sugar, and milk meant for the children to sell on the black market or feed their own families, looking on indifferently as infants bloated from hunger.
- Category II: Indifferent Automata – clerks, guards, and caregivers performing their duties mechanically, without a shred of empathy. For them, a dying child was merely another entry in a bureaucratic death registry, and the work was just a way to count down the hours until the end of a shift to collect their own food ration.
- Category III: The Intimidated and Paralyzed – employees who witnessed the horror and corruption within the building but remained silent out of fear. They turned a blind eye to the crimes of their colleagues, paralyzed by the dread of losing their jobs, their bread rations, or being thrown past the ghetto walls.
- Category IV: The Few Righteous – a handful of nurses and young educators who attempted to maintain human dignity in this hell and genuinely fought for the children's lives. These were the individuals Korczak tried to support and defend against the rest of the staff.
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| English translation of rescued Typewritten Document from 39 Dzielna Street: Words are plants, the writer is a gardener who arranges them into flowerbeds and wreaths. – Fate has assigned me the painful role of a gardener whose bouquets consist of thistles and nettles. Rebelling against this bitter lot, this time I wish to present the listeners with a bunch of lilies of the valley and forget-me-nots. Theme: the defense of the Orphanage at 39 Dzielna Street, which public opinion unjustly and unfairly calls a children's slaughterhouse and an inquisition. Honor to that part of the crew that did not abandon the ship during a fierce storm. An informational lecture /without charge/ will take place on date..... at ...... o'clock in room |
Among the fragmented typewritten pages saved from the Warsaw Ghetto, a short, undated card written (or dictated) by Janusz Korczak stands out as a tragic yet powerful testament to the Doctor's tactical genius and extraordinary moral courage. The blank spaces meant for filling in the date, time, and location ("on date..... at ...... o'clock in room") unequivocally prove that we are not dealing with a retrospective memoir. This is an original, rescued draft of a poster or a confidential invitation to a closed crisis meeting of the highest emotional temperature. It remains unknown whether this "Informational Lecture" ever actually took place.
It was one of the documents saved and delivered to the World by my father, Pan Misza, on August 5, 1942—the very day Korczak, his staff, and the children were marched to the Umschlagplatz. It stands as a Mercy Manifesto, where Korczak, despite his previous harsh assessments, desperately mounts a defense for the "few righteous" crew members of that sinking vessel.
Words are plants, the writer is a gardener who arranges them into flowerbeds and wreaths. – Fate has assigned me the painful role of a gardener whose bouquets consist of thistles and nettles.Rebelling against this bitter lot, this time I wish to present the listeners with a bunch of lilies of the valley and forget-me-nots.Theme: the defense of the Orphanage at 39 Dzielna Street, which public opinion unjustly and unfairly calls a children's slaughterhouse and an inquisition.Honor to that part of the crew that did not abandon the ship during a fierce storm.An informational lecture /without charge/ will take place on date..... at ...... o'clock in room
The Old Doctor's Conclusion
This sudden necessity to create lists, segregate staff, and write reports at Dzielna Street was a personal tragedy for Korczak. He realized that the war and the ghetto conditions created by the Germans did not merely destroy children's bodies, but caused a total erosion of the human conscience among adult caretakers. Where trust was replaced by fear and hunger, humanism had to yield to bureaucracy and ruthless survival. It is this cry of despair from the Old Doctor, preserved in the lists of 39 Dzielna Street, that reminds us what an unblemished and unique island the pre-war Orphans' Home at Krochmalna truly was.
