Friday, October 17, 2025

Typical Hoax concerning Janusz Korczak´s Orphanage - Kaczka dziennikarska, i nie tylko, na temat Domu Sierot Korczaka rozwinęła skrzydła.

The school building at 33 Chłodna Street is the first house on the left. 35 Chłodna Street is a wide (with 10 windows on the first floor) one-story house. Photo from September 1939.
School building at 33 Chłodna Street. Photo before WWII.


According to the Polish Ambassy in Tel Aviv:
Archaeologists in Warsaw have uncovered material traces of the children from Janusz Korczak’s and Stefania Wilczyńska’s Orphans’ Home.

In the cellars of the former school building at 35 Chłodna Street, where the orphanage was located during the German occupation, they discovered iodine ampoules, milk bottles, and a metal bed.

Originally packaged, full vials of iodine for wound disinfection. Standard Wehrmacht equipment during the war. They could only have found their way into the ghetto through smuggling.

What is wrong with this story?
The Warsaw Ghetto was officially sealed on November 16, 1940. At that time, Korczak's Orphanage "Dom Sierot" was relocated from its original location at 92 Krochmalna Street to the former school building at 33 Chłodna Street*, not number 35. So, excavating at the wrong address is not especially smart. 33 Chłodna Street was located within the borders of the Warsaw Ghetto at that time. Later, in October 1941, this section of Chłodna Street was excluded from the Ghetto, and Korczak's Orphanage was forced to move again to 16 Sienna Street at the southern border of the Little Ghetto. Korczak remained with the children at 16 Sienna Street until their deportation to the death camp Treblinka on August 5th, 1942.

Writing that originally packaged, full vials of iodine for wound disinfection, standard Wehrmacht equipment could only have found its way into the ghetto through smuggling is just a nonsensical as
Korczak´s Orphanage was there (33 Chłodna Street) for a very limited time. Also, the building that the Polish Embassy in Israel describes as a site of archeological investigations at the address 35 Chłodna Street was outside the Ghetto area.  

Writing about the findings at 35 Chłodna Street and relating it to Korczak's Orphanage is a typical Hoax in Polish Kaczka dziennikarska (may be not only). Findings look to be related to the time 1941-1944 and probably the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944.

* Emanuel Ringelblum wrote: With the outbreak of the Second World War, Korczak was faced with the difficult task of maintaining the institution on its pre-war level. With the establishment of the ghetto boundaries, it had to move from 92 Krochmalna to 33 Chłodna Street. With painstaking and laborious effort, the institution was transferred to its new location. But there, too, it did not find peace. That part of Chlodna was later excluded from the ghetto area and the children’s home had to move again to a new address, on Sienna 16, the headquarters of the former Association of Polish Business Employees. From there the institution was transferred to that place from where there is no return—to Treblinka.