100 Years Ago – October 9, 1926: The First Issue of "Mały Przegląd" Under Janusz Korczak. A Literary and Pedagogical Analysis.
The newspaper that is historically celebrated as an instant revolution was, in reality, not a sudden explosion. It was a slow, methodological evolution of both children's and Korczak's ideas. The first issue of Mały Przegląd (The Little Review), published on October 9, 1926, might have seemed quite boring—and in truth, it was! It was compiled entirely before a genuine network of children's correspondents had formed. Furthermore, out of loyalty to Korczak's institutional structures and the need to mimic the serious adult press as a supplement to Nasz Przegląd, it initially took on the stiff character of an official programmatic manifest.
Issue Number Zero
Issue Number One
The First Page: Stiff and Uninviting
The first page is strikingly dry, almost repelling compared to what Mały Przegląd would later become. Looking at the layout of the columns on this debut page, it is clear that it was structured like a typical, dull newspaper for adults, rather than a paper created by children for children:
- "FROM THE SEJM" (Parliament) as the Lead Story: Opening a children's paper with a heavy, political article about parliament is the absolute negation of a child's perspective.
- Medical and Disciplinary Topics: Texts concerning "Scarlet Fever" or "Littering the Streets" sound like stern, didactic lectures written by adult officials or doctors eager to moralize and educate youth from a position of authority.
- A Lack of Dynamism: The entire page resembles a rigid, mentoring monologue. There is not yet any space for an authentic voice, genuine emotions, or the everyday problems of children. I also deeply miss a single drawing or the crossword puzzles that later became so characteristic of the paper.
The Second Page: The Spark of the Korczak Habitus
Only after turning the page, on page two, does the true "Korczak style" begin to dawn—the very style that became the lasting foundation and legend of this publication:
- "The Straw Fire" (Słomiany ogień): Here, Korczak's profound child psychology emerges. This column touched the very core of children's enthusiasm—sudden, blazing, but often short-lived. Korczak wrote about this without an adult's cynicism, with complete and total understanding of a child's nature.
- "The First Mail": This was the embryo of what eventually revolutionized journalism. Although the letters in this first issue were few and heavily managed by the editorial staff, it was this column that threw open the gates for thousands of children's correspondents who would eventually completely displace the boring essays about Parliament or scarlet fever.
"The Straw Fire" – Prewar Prologue to the Ghetto Diary (1926–1942)
In that first issue from 1926, because "The First Mail" was still in its infancy and authentic children's letters were scarce, Korczak had to stage multi-voicedness himself. In "The Straw Fire," he creates a chorus of simulated children's explanations: "I wanted to," "I fired up," "but it passed," "my mother didn't let me," "school weighed me down." The adult editor writes on behalf of the children, protecting them from the mentors' accusations of laziness or instability.
Few realize that this exact same mechanism, this unique rhetoric of simulated dialogue and protective excuses, returns with devastating, existential weight sixteen years later—in Korczak's "Ghetto Diary" of 1942.
In the horrific conditions of the Warsaw Ghetto, a deeply isolated Korczak writes about the former alumni of his Orphanage. He writes of those who grew up, who are managing better or worse, but who do not come to visit him on Krochmalna or Sienna Street. Yet, instead of condemning them for ingratitude, Korczak employs the same technique from 1926. He writes their roles for them, composing their justifications himself: "I don't come because I am ashamed," "because I have no shoes," "because it hurts too much to see the starving children."
Whether in his prewar editorial office in 1926 or on the threshold of the gas chambers in 1942, Korczak's biological structure of empathy remained unchanged. When the crowd failed or had not yet arrived, the Old Doctor sat alone at his desk, simulating the presence of the other, taking the blame upon himself to shield those he loved.
Issue Number Two: The Death of a Dog in Józefów and the Birth of Child Subjectivity
The second issue is arguably just as dry initially. Nearly two-thirds of the publication (two out of three pages) is consumed by "Answers to Letters" penned by Korczak. It is a dense, heavy block of text, highly uninviting to a young reader searching for momentum.
The single, authentic breath of life in this editorial monolith is a printed facsimile of a child's handwritten letter. A young boy named Miecio describes a tragedy at the Otwock railway line. For me, as an adult reader today, this letter carries an overwhelming, almost paralyzing force.
How the 1st Letter to Małego Przegl. Looks:
This year we lived in
Józefów in Shatner's villa next to the station.
one afternoon when I went out
to wait for daddy. A fast
train arrived from Otwock and under it gotundera little doggie. Because the train ran over
his paw. The doggie writhed in terrible
pains. One of those passing by couldn't
look at itin terribleso he
killed him. We boys dug
a pit and buried him— Miecio Klajnerer.
What Miecio Klajnerer records with his childish handwriting is pure, unfiltered realism of the lines near Warsaw. There are no euphemisms, no adult sentimentalism. It is the raw mechanics of an event: a speeding train, a crushed paw, a dog writhing in convulsions, and an anonymous passerby who commits a brutal act of mercy—killing the animal because he himself cannot bear the sight of its suffering.
Yet, the most magnificent and pedagogically shattering moment is the finale: "We boys dug a pit and buried him."
In this single, laconic sentence, Korczak found exactly what he had been waiting for. This is why he decided to print the letter not as typeset text, but as an authentic graphic cliché of the child's actual handwriting. In the adult world, a routine thing had occurred—the train moved on, the passerby struck the dog and walked away, the system kept moving. The children were the only ones to step outside this mechanical rush. They stopped, and through the ritual of a burial, they restored the trampled moral order and the dignity of that living creature.
This letter stands as final proof that the true spirit of Mały Przegląd was not born in the dull monologues about parliament on page one. It was born in that drainage ditch by the station in Józefów, where young boys with shovels proved to be the only real human beings on the entire platform.
