Korczak’s Footprint in Galilee, 8 Złota Street, and the Lesson of "The Stubborn Boy"

With us, there is nothing new. The children are in the countryside. I was with them through July. I do not want you to write back to me if we are to see each other. – Perhaps (if the elders permit) a letter about the squirrels could be written to them. Speak with Moshe, Shoshana, etc. Szalom, Korczak.

Korczak wrote: August 22, 1939. Dearest Zerubavel, After the war [WWI], we (the Orphans' Home) used to receive American, Swiss, Dutch gifts, etc. Among other things, I wrote to the British Consul requesting floor rags. No answer. After eight months had passed, a formal notice arrived from London stating that a crate was ready for pickup, containing such an enormous supply of rags that they have lasted us until this very day. I asked the Polish Consul in Jerusalem to gift the children of Palestine plenty of squirrels, beautiful creatures. – He did not understand. I read that there are squirrels in India: red ones here, gray ones there. I am certain that if the children write to the British authorities (I do not know to whom), they will surely send Indian squirrels by aeroplane. Trees without squirrels are sad and motionless. – My idea about the kites did not succeed (which is equally important), perhaps this one will. – If adults consider....

Zerubavel Gilead / Korczak and the kite game

"My idea of playing with kites did not succeed...
Perhaps I shall succeed yet."

From a letter of Korczak's that reached Israel the day World War II broke out

– An orange paper dragon pursues a red one
and a yellow dragon triumphs over both –
no! there's not enough in that to fire the imagination
and awaken joy and intoxication of the heart.
For you must know
that without breathlessness and pounding hearts
play is not play for children.
I once grasped the hand of a kid that was sailing
a toy boat on the river – his pulse was like the pulse
of one sick with malaria.
Perhaps he felt like Magellan or Vasco da Gama
and did not know he was really a new Columbus
discovering his own America, there on the stream-bank
in a remote village.
The light of the cigarette gleamed between his lips
and he stopped to ask:

– Which way do the winds blow where you live,
in the morning, in the evening?
And does the wind usually come from the sea?
Oh, that's good, very good! Describe to me how
a kite flies in the wind today
with the thin string quivering in a child's fist

flashing yellow and blue, deep blue,
like the one I saw once over the Gilboa
when I visited your country.
Imagine:
a silent paper dragon in the twilight gloom
and a red skyrocket above it –
the children face to face are sending up stars
and see, they reach up
to the very heart of heaven!
When I was four or five, I too
used to send up kites, and when
the thread was cut my paper dragon flew off
and was lost in the clouds.
Tears would fill my eyes
and through the tears I would see angels' wings
hugging my kite.
And now I'm old, you know
but when I'm feeling very bitter
I close my eyes and see before me
pure-white wings in the clouds.
The cigarette stump went out.
The two of us were silent in the dark.

Korczak’s Footprint in Galilee, 8 Złota Street, and the Lesson of "The Stubborn Boy"

To fully comprehend the depth of Gilead's poem, we must return to the 1930s. Zerubavel Gilead spent two years in Warsaw (1937–1938) and became a close friend of Janusz Korczak and Cywia Lubetkin. Thanks to his presence in the capital, one of the most poignant and unique descriptions of the Old Doctor's private, domestic space from that period has been preserved:

“You can enter the small house at 8 Złota Street by climbing the wooden stairs. The door is opened, as usual, by the Doctor's sister (...). In Korczak's room, there is a simple desk, an old wooden sofa, and a wardrobe full of books. There is only one painting on the wall - a painting of his mother.”

The house on Złota Street is a story of its own—the building belonged to Mieczysław Grydzewski, the legendary editor of Wiadomości Literackie. Gilead recalls that when he visited that modest room one day to congratulate Korczak on his newly published book about Louis Pasteur, titled “The Stubborn Boy” (published in 1937), he heard words from the Old Doctor that cast a completely new light on his late literary focus:

“I wrote 'The Stubborn Boy' precisely now—in times when cruelty and spiritual captivity are debilitating us, at a moment when the Nazi madness is spreading all around. I wrote it so that the children growing up now would know that there are also other people in the world who have dedicated and are dedicating their lives not to annihilating man, but to liberating him, to enriching and ennobling the human being.”

In the face of the hatred consuming Europe, this story of hard work, scientific devotion, and fulfilled dreams was meant to serve as a moral shield for the children.

During his visits to Palestine in 1934 and 1936, Korczak spent most of his time at Kibbutz Ein Harod in Galilee. He watched the school classes and attached immense importance to free play. It was there, on the Galilean hills, that he personally taught the children of the kibbutz the art of flying kites. This tradition ran so deep that from those days to this very day, the annual Kite Day is celebrated in Ein Harod in honor of the Old Doctor, drawing hundreds of children and adults from near and far.

The most dramatic and historically important element of this final letter, written on August 22, 1939 (as clearly visible on the attached scan of the original document), are the words: “I do not want you to write back to me if we are to see each other.” This sentence definitively dismantles the post-war myth of an evacuation or escape: the Doctor was fully convinced of his imminent journey to Israel, scheduled for September–October 1939. Instead, the letter reached Ein Harod precisely on September 1, 1939—becoming his final voice, severed by the outbreak of World War II. Yet, when the Doctor's life was extinguished at the Umschlagplatz in August 1942, his kites were still flying over Galilee.

---