MY INTRODUCTION
Why did Paulina Appenszlak’s book 'Korczak Stays' fall into oblivion? I have asked many people this question, but I have never received a truly genuine, concrete answer. I turned to members of the Korczak Organizations in Israel, requesting a translation or at least a summary of the book. I was mainly interested in the moments of Korczak’s life that are unknown to us but were undoubtedly known to the author. Unfortunately, I was met with silence—except for one organization member who declared that he had the book in his home library but had never read it because it was 'old, from the 1940s.' Therefore, while visiting Israel, I managed to purchase the Hebrew edition of this book with over 300 pages.
Everyone knows that I personally dislike reading works about Korczak where the authors merely relay their observations based on previous authors, filling the entire work with the word 'ibid.'—signifying a previously published biography that itself was based on an even earlier one. The failure to cite genuine primary sources dominates many of these works.
Another reason for the book's oblivion is the criticism of the 'professor'—as he was called, or rather mocked, before he officially received that title. Aleksander Lewin wrote about this book, stating that someone had said it had no value, and that Leon Harari, a former youth journalist for Korczak’s newspaper 'Mały Przegląd,' confirmed this. It should be added that Leon was neither a pupil nor an educator in Korczak’s orphanage. Since Lewin 'distinguished himself' during the Stalinist period in Poland—where he actively contributed to suffocating the newly formed Korczak Committee and halting the publication of Korczak’s works—I decided, with the help of AI and my own 'I' (Intelligence), to translate Paulina Appenszlak’s book into Polish.
INTRODUCTION BY PAULINA APPENSZLAK
Paulina Appenszlak: My Meetings with the Doctor and Preserving Memory (1944)
When I saw him for the first time, I was eight or nine years old. In those days, Korczak was known as "Doctor Henryk Goldszmit." He wore a black tie around his neck, knotted according to the fashion embraced by writers of that era. His hair was thick and golden, and two children about three years old sat on his knees. This took place at the Foundling Home on Franciszkańska Street—the famous Warsaw orphanage that later became Korczak’s home, where hundreds of orphans became members of his family.
In those days, the young doctor—whose appearance resembled a character from Stefan Żeromski's work, specifically one of the figures in the novel Homeless People—frequently appeared there. During that period, while those homeless people walked the streets of Warsaw, he arrived every day at five o’clock to examine the infants and play with them.
I became connected to this orphanage through my geography teacher, Julia, and Stefania Wilczyńska—two young women from wealthy homes who had just returned from Switzerland after completing their university studies there. Their hearts were set ablaze and overflowing with the idea of the mission that lay upon them: bringing education to the masses. One of them was invited to the municipal care facility where I was also enrolled.
Along with a group of my peers, I initially came there to play with the infants, and later, as I grew up, to organize amateur plays, sports competitions, help with homework, and so on. At five o’clock, everyone sat around the table in the grand hall; each person received a cup of hot milk and two slices of challah bread. Janusz Korczak, Julia, Stefania Wilczyńska, us, and those unfamiliar children. Soon, the children from the orphanage joined us, creating a single, close-knit, and united group of friends. We quickly grew accustomed to their broken Polish, which was the flawed speech of orphans, and Korczak always noted down certain Yiddish words to remember them for the future. He was then a promising, budding Polish writer with bright prospects ahead of him; even then, his first book, Children of the Street, provoked a great deal of discussion.
In a later period—after a hiatus that lasted nearly half a human lifetime, encompassing entire epochs filled with cataclysmic events shaking both the world and Poland—I had the opportunity to meet Korczak under entirely different circumstances. By then, I had completed my secondary education and university studies, which allowed me to objectively evaluate Korczak’s literary stature. It had grown and matured before my eyes, completely sidelining beautiful literature for adults to become the creator of stories about Jasis, Mośkes, Józeks, and Franeks—about "Mośkes, Jośkes, and Sruls"—and the author of a diary from summer camps for Polish and Jewish children. He became the author of The Beginning, King Matt the First, and King Matt on a Desert Island—tales for youth that formed the ideological structure of his programs, books demanding independence for the world of children.
After many years, I found myself in the editorial office of Nasz Przegląd, working side by side at an editorial desk. There, he was surrounded by crowds of rowdy, rebellious teenagers and young girls. I also met him frequently in the print shop, where he gave instructions to the typesetters. This took place during the early days of his unique publication, Mały Przegląd, which was edited by Korczak himself. As the newspaper grew more popular and its circulation increased, it became harder to find Korczak in the editorial room. He had done his part, given the initial impulse, infused new, fresh blood with the full authority of his great name, and then sent a deputy in his place—withdrawing from editorial work.
The thing that struck fear into me every time I passed the editorial room was Korczak’s searching gaze. Whenever he looked at me, I felt as though I were guilty of all the evil happening around us, that a massive weight of responsibility lay upon me for all those dressed-up, idle young ladies, for spoiled infants and egocentrics, for politicians trading their political views, and for bestselling literature written with lofty words, used poorly through all kinds of empty clichés that dull minds and serve only profit and flattery. Every time I saw Korczak, writing became difficult for me. He acted upon me like a pang of conscience.
Yet today, as I begin to write down these memories, which have accumulated in great volume over a friendship lasting nearly thirty years, that old feeling of dread returns to haunt me. Tumbled down upon me, from behind the thick lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses, comes that sad, blue-tinted gaze that seemed to foresee all the acts of injustice and terror destined to arrive in the future. From behind the collar of the faded, worn military jacket that characterized him, that deeply dear, precious, and familiar face of Janusz Korczak turned toward me.
In 1941, the possibility of letters written from Poland reaching Eretz Israel—which we had relied upon since the outbreak of the war—ceased completely. There were no longer even those famous twenty-five words sent to us via the Red Cross, written in block letters in familiar, routine formulas—formulas meant to substitute for the presence of all those we yearned for through the years of wartime separation. From behind borders that were perfectly guarded, refugees arrived one by one from the great German prison into which Poland had been transformed. These were political activists, youth from "He-Chalutz" who, thanks to their membership in this organization, managed to maintain contact with countries neighboring Poland. These were children who had saved themselves by some miracle, smuggled under train cars or in sacks, as well as numerous citizens of allied states exchanged for German citizens. They were the ones who told the stories. For two years, I recorded testimonies from their lips. They spent the days in the ghetto alongside you. News also poured in from neutral countries, from journalists and public institutions.
For a long time, we lacked the will to believe any of it. Only later, gradually, step by step, did the terrible truth penetrate our consciousness. There is no one left. Everyone drowned in a sea of blood. Not even any documents remained. Nothing survived of the once-vibrant life of this community, which only a moment ago flourished in its full development. They faced what is most terrifying for the deceased—the death of oblivion.
And in those days, a well-known Polish film director, Józef Lejtes, approached me with a proposal to write a screenplay for a film about a legendary figure from the ghetto—Janusz Korczak. In search of documents, testimonies, and press clippings about Janusz Korczak, I met with people who knew him, who had been his classmates in school and university, and who had participated alongside him in various social works. I came to know many from his circle: his students and pupils. They, too, refused to believe that he was gone. I traveled from city to city, from village to village, looking for these people. They were like a living museum of Korczak.
Fate favored me, and I also recovered almost all of his books, which had been nearly entirely burned by the Germans in Poland, as well as dozens of his local letters. From the stories of these people, from their writings, and from my own private memories, I drew my material and decided to write a book about Janusz Korczak. No other goal stood before my eyes except this single one: to preserve his memory and unfold the story of his life before the reader.
Apart from the dialogues, there is almost nothing in this book that is fabricated or invented from the heart; in this, I rely on the goodwill of the people who provided me with this information. I do not list their names here because they consider these meetings and relationships with Korczak as a kind of their most intimate memories. Nevertheless, I offer my thanks to everyone for their participation in my work in that world. I wish to express my special gratitude here to Mr. Lejtes for his invaluable help in developing the structure of this book. A few paragraphs, which we have marked with an asterisk, have been copied from the writings of Korczak himself, as I recognized in them material of an autobiographical nature.
