Censorship that affected Henryk Goldszmit - Janusz Korczak.

Between the Nazi occupation and the anti-communist revolution of 1956, Poland underwent twelve years of Stalinist rule. The censorship office in Poland — the Central Office for the Control of Press, Publications, and Events (GUKPPiW) — was set up in January 1945. The highest activity of GUKPPiW was during the so-called, Stalinist period, lasting from 1948 to 1956 when Bolesław Bierut was the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party. The next First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party was Władysław Gomółka who started the antisemitic campaign during the mid-60-ties that caused the emigration of the Jews, many of them Holocaust survivors. At that time Polish Komitet Korczakowsi closed and dissolved (1968-1969).  

Censor REVIEW of one of the books by Korczak, dated April 3, 1954: The book should be withdrawn from school libraries for the following reasons: 1. From a scientific point of view, it has no value. Its content is banal, and the style is terrible. 

Censorship that affected Janusz Korczak started actually during the Russian Tsar-time. Dziecko salonu was published weekly in a Polish magazine - Glos - Voice. 

Censorship that affected Janusz Korczak started actually during the Tsar-time. Korczaks novel, Dziecko salonu was published weekly in a Polish magazine - Glos - Voice that was a case for the Tsar censorship.. Thereafter, the next censorship that affected Korczak started actually before WWII, during a wave of anti-Semitism in Poland in the 30-ties. Korczak was dismissed from the Polskie Radio (Polish Radio) after several years as the popular "Stary Doktor" - “Old Doctor” – answering questions from young listeners. The next censorship that affected Korczak was of course WWII itself in the German-occupied territories.

Between the Nazi occupation and the anti-communist revolution of 1956, Poland underwent twelve years of Stalinist rule. The censorship office in Poland — the Central Office for the Control of Press, Publications, and Events (Głównego Urzędu Kontroli Prasy, Publikacji i Widowisk - GUKPPiW) — was set up in January 1945. The highest activity of GUKPPiW was during the so-called, Stalinist period, lasting from 1948 to 1956 when Bolesław Bierut was the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party. All aspects of life were controlled and Poland was supposed to copy the Soviet system. 

The next First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party was Władysław Gomółka who started the antisemitic campaign during the mid-60-ties that caused the emigration of the Jews, many of them Holocaust survivors. At that time Polish Komitet Korczakowski at Jasna Street was closed and dissolved.

I do not have statistics about Korczak's works released in Poland after 1967 when I left Poland. It is, however, most likely that after this antisemitic campaign, new institutions were "responsible for Korczak". An agency of a different nature and tasks was the Polish Interpress Agency. It was established in 1967 by the merger of several previously existing press and publishing institutions and companies. Interpress became an efficient tool of propaganda, addressed also abroad.
The managerial positions in Interpress were covered by the strict party people, especially when the staffing of foreign posts was of interest to the secret services. So since 1967, Korczak was "used" for different Polish purposes, political among others, Marek Jaworski published a book about Korczak in 1973.

Contacts with the West and with Israel after 1967.

Censors controlled the party press, radio, plays, films, leaflets, and books. The control also covered printing companies selling matrices; bookstores; antique shops; libraries; and culture clubs. The censorship apparatus was an important tool of the PZPR’s securing the interests of the party and also its individuals.

Censor REVIEW - April 3, 1954 (Full text) The book should be withdrawn from school libraries for the following reasons: 1. From a scientific point of view, it has no value. Its content is banal, and the style is terrible. The author speaks the colloquial language of boys, uses almost tabloid expressions taken from the suburbs of Warsaw, and introduces them to the style in the bright form. This kind of approach reduces the educational value of the book to almost zero. 2. The author, by telling various events or writing a boys' diary, distorts the problem of summer camps and presents the summer camps falsely. According to the author, the content of the book has a bad effect on young people, it is easy to learn nicknames, and bad behavior and may even become a source of hooliganism. 3. The book has no literary value. It is devoid of literary beauty, it arouses rather disgust in the reader, while for young people it can be a wake-up call for hooligan antics. 4. The ideological and educational assumptions of the curricula are not completely reflected in the content of the book. In 25 chapters of various sizes, the author tells about many events and antics of young people. Chapters are not interconnected with each other. The whole content creates a cluster of various facts. Summing up the whole thing, it should be said that the book has no value, it can rather be a cause of evil, so it should not be in libraries. Rather, it is suitable for waste paper. 3.IV.54. St. Gajowniczek

After the harmful and pseudoscientific experiment of Aleksander Lewin (a work of socialist realism in form and content, published by the PZWS publishing house, in 1953), nothing is really surprising. Lewin also performed a breakneck trick (a rabbit out of a hat) with the disappearing Korczak, whom he transformed into a Soviet pedagogical theorist, Makarenko. The arrangement of Lewin's views corresponded to the Stalinist political arrangement. 

Much to my father's regret, who protected Lewin in 1937 as a Bursa student to Korczak (both of them came from Pinsk), Lewin never directly apologized for the shameful "killing of Korczak in the 1950s". A (very small) trace of Lewin's self-criticism can, however, be found in the "Introduction" to the first edition of "Pisma Selected" by Janusz Korczak". Lewin writes, -in the past times -, "I can refer to my own reasons, which I professed" (see "Problems of Collective Education", PZWS, 1953). 

Joanna Olczak-Ronniker in her book Korczak. An Attempted Biography ”expresses irritation at Lewin's attitude towards the documents that my father Misza Wasserman Wróblewski collected from Korczak's room on the evening of August 5, 1942, and transferred to the Big Ghetto. The documents found their way to the Aryan side, to Bielany, and there, in the building of the orphanage Nasz Dom, Our house, they disappeared. After Ronniker-Olczak, here I quote again Lewin: 

It is not worth delving too much into this kind of detective deliberation.