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In his 1910 novel Mośki, Joski i Srule, Janusz Korczak describes how Jewish children, not knowing the Polish language, communicated with him using a delighted exclamation of "Oooo!", pointing their fingers at nature and their new surroundings.
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| 2-4 Franciszkańska Street, Warszawa. I was 8 or 9 years old at the time, and Korczak went by the name of Doctor Henryk Goldszmit. He wore a black bow tie and had a thick, reddish head of hair when I saw him for the first time with two three-year-old children held on his lap. This was at the Orphans’ Home on Franciszkańska Street—that famous Orphans' Home in Warsaw, which later became Korczak's home, while several hundred orphans became his only family. |
Paulina Appenszlak's Memoir (1943/1944)
Below is an excerpt from an article about Janusz Korczak published in the newspaper W Drodze (On the Way) in 1943. This text was subsequently included in the first biography of Korczak, titled Korczak, which was written by Paulina Appenszlak and published in 1944.
Paulina Appenszlak (née Jamajka), a prominent pre-war editor and publicist, secured her place in history as an absolute pioneer of literature dedicated to the memory of Janusz Korczak. She completed her book while in exile in Palestine (Eretz Israel) as early as 1944. The manuscript, written in Polish, was translated and published in Hebrew in 1946 under the poignant title Ha-Doktor nish’ar (The Doctor Remained). It was a biographical narrative. Appenszlak combined three source layers within it: her own pre-war personal memories of knowing Korczak (up to 1939), the first accounts reaching her from occupied Europe from surviving educators and orphans of the Orphans’ Home, and numerous quotes from the Doctor’s pre-war works. The book's title became a symbol—emphasizing that the Doctor did not take the opportunity to escape and remained with the children until the very end.
Excerpt from the Biography
I was 8 or 9 years old at the time, and Korczak went by the name of Doctor Henryk Goldszmit. He wore a black bow tie and had a thick, reddish head of hair when I saw him for the first time with two three-year-old children held on his lap. This was at the Orphans’ Home on Franciszkańska Street—that famous Orphans' Home in Warsaw, which later became Korczak's home, while several hundred orphans became his only family.
The doctor, young at the time, resembled Judym [a fictional idealistic doctor from Polish literature], for it was precisely during that period that the Judyms walked the streets of Warsaw. He would appear every day at 5 o’clock to examine and play with the children. I became friends with the Orphans’ Home through my geography and natural science teacher and her sisters, Julia and Stefania Wilczyńska. They were two elegant young ladies from a wealthy, assimilated home who had just returned from completing their studies in Switzerland with feverish minds packed with a mission to spread education; one of them had been hired at a middle-class girls' boarding school.
With a group of girls, we would come first for communal games with the children, and later, as we grew up, to organize amateur theater performances, tend to small garden plots, help with homework, and so on. At 5 o’clock, we would sit around a large table in the big hall. Each of us would receive a tin mug of warm milk and two buns. Korczak, Julia, and Stefania Wilczyńska, we outsider children, and the children from the Orphanage formed a perfectly harmonious company. We quickly grew accustomed to the orphans' poor Polish; Korczak repeated certain Jewish words to memorize them. He was then a young, promising Polish writer whose first book, Dziecko salonu (Child of the Drawing Room), had sparked a great deal of discussion. There was only one thing I could not explain to myself: why was he not disgusted by children with large scabs [favus/tinea capitis] on their shaven skulls? And I watched in silent admiration as he held these little scabbed creatures close and kissed them.
Analysis of Korczak's Knowledge of Yiddish
Did Korczak know Jewish [Yiddish]? Many "biographers" "swear" that he did not. This assertion (which is untrue) is the result of forcefully linking Korczak exclusively with Polish culture, as well as the fact that in many circles, the language of the Jewish intelligentsia was considered a jargon, a language of the poor—which was not entirely true. It must be emphasized that Korczak knew German (he attended lectures in Berlin), and he had previously stayed with Jewish children at summer camps where the Jewish language dominated. It is highly possible that Korczak did not speak Yiddish with adults.
A multitude of myths has grown around Janusz Korczak’s knowledge of the Yiddish language (commonly referred to at the time as the Jewish language), and the claims of many biographers that the Doctor did not know it at all are factually false. This erroneous belief stems from two reasons: the desire to completely appropriate Korczak for Polish culture, and an old, class-based prejudice of the Jewish intelligentsia, who considered Yiddish to be a "jargon of poverty" and a language unsuitable for drawing rooms. The truth is, of course, far more complex and fascinating.
After the war, a curtain of silence grew around Henryk Goldszmit’s figure regarding his actual linguistic competence. Many superficial "biographers" swear that Korczak did not know the Yiddish language, trying to forcefully fit him exclusively into the framework of Polish culture and sever him from his roots. This claim glaringly contradicts the truth and ignores the realities of the work the Doctor conducted for nearly four decades.
The Doctor's Polyglotism: German, French, and Russian
To understand Korczak’s linguistic toolkit, one must view him as a comprehensively educated, European intellectual of the turn of the century. Korczak was fluent in German. It was in this language that he listened to complex medical and pediatric lectures in Berlin in the years 1907–1908 and studied the specialist literature there. Korczak knew French well, which he used during his studies in Paris (1910). As a Tsarist subject, a student of a gymnasia, later a student at the Russified Imperial University of Warsaw, and a doctor in the Russian army during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, he spoke Russian fluently.
The Yiddish Myth: Why Didn't He Speak It with Adults?
Indeed, Janusz Korczak did not write his books in Yiddish (although numerous of his books and articles appeared in Yiddish) and rarely, if ever, spoke the language with adults. This stemmed from the fact that for the assimilated, enlightened Jewish intelligentsia of that era, Yiddish was long considered an inferior language, a jargon of the street and the poor. Korczak, raised in a Polish-speaking home, thought and wrote in Polish. However, not speaking Yiddish in drawing rooms and not knowing it at all are two completely different things.
Korczak’s true linguistic laboratory was not the salons of writers, but his daily, hard work with children from the Jewish proletariat. This is evidenced by Paulina Appenszlak’s testimony from the orphanage at 2 Franciszkańska Street, where a young Henryk Goldszmit would pull a notebook from his pocket and feverishly write down the Yiddish words the children used, so he could memorize them for the future. For him, learning Yiddish was a necessary condition for understanding the psyche and identity of the orphans. He noted down Hebrew words in a similar fashion while in Palestine.
At summer camps (in Łapigrosz, Michałówka, or at "Różyczka" in Gocławek) and at 92 Krochmalna Street, Korczak cared for hundreds of children among whom Yiddish was the natural language, and sometimes the only one. In order to diagnose their fears, listen to their grievances before the Peer Court, and teach them independence, the Doctor had to understand this language. He understood it perfectly from hearing it. He knew its idioms, its specific humor, children's calls, and the painful mental shortcuts used by the "street children" from his 1901 debut novel. Korczak writes about this in the novel Mośki, Joski i Srule, where the Jewish children speak to Korczak by saying "oooo," pointing at objects or events.
"Oooo!"
In his 1910 novel Mośki, Joski i Srule, Janusz Korczak describes how Jewish children, not knowing the Polish language, communicated with him using a delighted exclamation of "Oooo!", pointing their fingers at nature and their new surroundings. This drawn-out "Oooo!", which accompanied the sight of birds, frogs, or a river, became an international language of emotion for the Doctor and a bridge to learning Yiddish. This scene emphasizes that communication with his young charges was based on attentive listening and shared wonder, even before the doctor mastered their speech.
*In 1904 and 1907, Korczak was an educator at summer camps for Jewish boys at the "Michałówka" center in Daniłowo-Błędnica. He described this experience in the book "Mośki, Joski i Srule" (published in 1909).
** Before it became a flagship institution, Dom Sierot orphanage operated out of a cramped, rented facility at 2 Franciszkańska Street. Franciszkańska orphanage became historically monumental as it was in this building that, in 1909, Stefania Wilczyńska (as also described by eyewitness Appenszlak), who began volunteering there, met Dr. Henryk Goldszmit (Korczak).
