Anatomy of Memory – Architects of Janusz Korczak’s Biography
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| The Red Cross used to transmit short inquiries about the fates of private individuals. Here is an inquiry sent from Israel to the Orphans’ Home on Krochmalna Street, five months before the forced relocation to the ghetto on 33 Chłodna Street. [1] |
The reception of the life and tragic death of Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit) is not a homogeneous monolith. The knowledge we possess today was shaped by the first biographies. These were written under vastly different geographical, political, and emotional conditions. Analyzing the works of Paulina Appenszlak, Mieczysław Zylbertal (Moshe Zartal), and Hanna Mortkowicz-Olczakowa reveals not only the figure of the Old Doctor. Above all, it uncovers a dramatic evolution in the cognitive perspectives of the authors themselves.
The Pre-War Melting Pot: The Environment of "Nasz Przegląd" and the Weekly "EWA"
The foundation of the relationships connecting Janusz Korczak with Paulina Appenszlak and Mieczysław Zylbertal was a shared press and ideological space in interwar Warsaw. The intellectual home for this group was the powerful daily newspaper Nasz Przegląd (Our Review). It served as a platform for the Polish-speaking Jewish intelligentsia. It was there that Paulina’s husband, Jakub Appenszlak, served as an editor. Korczak himself created the revolutionary Mały Przegląd (Little Review), which was edited by children. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The question of Korczak’s direct, authorial collaboration with the feminist weekly EWA (1928–1933), managed by Paulina Appenszlak, remains a matter of speculation. The magazine’s profile focused on emancipation, family relations, health, and modern upbringing. While this perfectly matched the Doctor’s mission, there is no proof that he wrote texts specifically for this title. However, Korczak’s persona and his ideas were constantly present there through reviews of his books. These included The Child's Right to Respect from 1929. His ideas also appeared via mentions in interviews with other educators of the era. The true alliance between Appenszlak and Korczak took place at the level of values. Her fight for the subjectivity of women and his battle for the subjectivity of children were two sides of the same revolutionary program to emancipate the excluded. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
The Refugee Optics: Writing "In Shock" (Palestine, 1944)
The pre-war contact of young Mieczysław Zylbertal with Korczak had a completely different character. As an activist for Hashomer Hatzair, he represented a new generation of rebellion. For this generation, the Doctor’s pre-war literature was an existential manifest. Zylbertal knew Korczak personally and recalled his first cool reception in the office on Krochmalna Street. He became his close friend, and in 1936, served as his guide through the Israeli kibbutes. Zartal saw Korczak up close in his working gray smock. He witnessed a man embittered and exhausted by the antisemitic campaign in Poland, but also full of brilliant medical intuition. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
When the war broke out, both Paulina Appenszlak (who left in December 1939) and Zartal found themselves in Mandatory Palestine. Around 1944, the first biographical accounts of the Doctor were created there. Paulina Appenszlak completed her Polish manuscript as a partly fictionalized biographical novel. It was published in 1946 in Hebrew under the title Ha-Doktor nish'ar (The Doctor Remained). At the same time Zartal, serving in military tents in the desert, wrote down his intimate memories. These were later published in the volume In the Presence of Korczak (Be-mechicato she l Korczak). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Both of these works were born in a state of deep wartime shock. The authors wrote at a moment when the Holocaust—the Shoah—was still unfolding on Polish lands. Only fragmentary, shocking reports about the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto were reaching Palestine. Their work was an emergency reaction. It was an attempt to immediately raise a moral monument to their mentor by "Survivors" affected by a sense of helplessness. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The culmination of this Land of Israel phase of memory is a poignant, pre-war recollection by Zartal recorded on page 62 of his book. Korczak, hearing about the British decrees blocking Aliyah (emigration) to Palestine, asked with childish defiance: "And if I take all my children and set out on the road with them—and we go to the Land of Israel, what will they do to me?" Zartal fell silent and smiled, treating it as a poetic metaphor. The tragedy of history meant that this dream of a joint march toward the sun materialized as a horrific nightmare on August 5, 1942. Korczak indeed took all his children and marched with them—but it was the final march to the platform of death, to the Umschlagplatz on the way to the gas chambers of Treblinka. While Appenszlak created the literary myth of "The Doctor who remained," Zartal immortalized this fact as the ultimate fulfillment of a tragic fate. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
The Post-War Perspective: A Reckoning of Ruins from the Literary Salon (Warsaw, 1949)
The monograph Janusz Korczak by Hanna Mortkowicz-Olczakowa, published in 1949, opens a completely new era in the history of the Doctor's legacy. Just five years passed between the works from Palestine (1944) and the book from Warsaw (1949). Yet, in the realm of psychology and history, these dates are separated by a civilizational divide. Mortkowicz-Olczakowa wrote in a world where the final, horrific toll of the Shoah was already known. Her perspective was not dominated by sudden shock, but by deep post-war mourning and an awareness of the irreversibility of the losses. The author created her work upon the ashes, in a ruined Warsaw, walking the same streets that had become the cemetery of her pre-war world. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The unique character of this biography stems directly from the author's lineage and intellectual background. As the daughter of Jakub and Janina Mortkowicz—legendary Warsaw publishers—and a graduate of Polish philology and history, Hanna grew up in the very center of the Polish literary elite. Janusz Korczak was not an ideological symbol for her; he was a long-time family friend, a constant guest, a figure from the private universe of her childhood. The Mortkowicz environment, unlike that of Appenszlak or Zylbertal, was not connected to the Zionist movement. Their point of reference was a Polish-speaking, assimilated humanist culture. For Mortkowicz-Olczakowa, Korczak was primarily an outstanding Polish creator and a universal doctor of the poor, rather than a precursor of kibbutz upbringing. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The Philologist’s Craft: The Structure of Literary Montage
The training in Polish philology shaped the innovative form of Mortkowicz-Olczakowa’s 1949 monograph. The author departed from the traditional linear biographical model in favor of a sophisticated literary montage. The well-known skeletal facts of Henryk Goldszmit’s life served only as a structural frame. The true essence that filled this work became precisely selected quotes from Korczak’s own rich body of work. Treating literature as a living psychological document, she allowed the Doctor to co-create his own biography and speak with his own voice. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Simultaneously, as with Appenszlak and Zartal, this structure was saturated with unique, previously unknown personal threads. Her closeness to his salon allowed Mortkowicz-Olczakowa to introduce intimate "behind the scenes" anecdotes. These included descriptions of his daily habits, his melancholy, his difficult character, and his uncompromising relationships with adults. The most important methodological difference, however, lay in the access to eyewitnesses. Writing in Warsaw, Mortkowicz-Olczakowa reached people who survived the occupation and witnessed Korczak’s tragic struggle to care for the children in the ghetto. Her key source of information became Korczak's former collaborators, including my father, "Pan Misza" (Michał Wróblewski/Wasserman), a close associate of the Doctor and an educator at the Orphans’ Home. Thanks to this, the Warsaw biography could combine the literary analysis of pre-war writings with the harrowing, documented factual history of Korczak's final months inside the enclosed district. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
A comparison of these three early biographies reveals a fascinating process behind the birth of the Korczak canon. Paulina Appenszlak remains the absolute pioneer of this literature. It was she, in the deep shock of 1944, who first erected a literary monument to the Doctor's memory, defining the message that the Doctor remained. Mieczysław Zylbertal supplemented this monument with a vivid, factual, and generational record of youthful rebellion and intimate closeness. In turn, Hanna Mortkowicz-Olczakowa, utilizing her philological craft and her unique status as a family friend, filled this frame with deep literary analysis and the harrowing accounts of surviving witnesses. Although they were separated by time (political) divides, geography, and ideology, their works complemented each other, rescuing the human, multidimensional face of Henryk Goldszmit from oblivion. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Source Bibliography (The First Biographies of Janusz Korczak)
- Appenszlak Paulina [Appenszlak Poli], הדוקטור נשאר: רומן ביוגרפי על יאנוש קורצ'アק (Ha-Doktor nish'ar: Roman biografii al Janusz Korczak / The Doctor Remained: A Biographical Novel about Janusz Korczak), translated from the Polish manuscript into Hebrew by Avraham Ben-Yitzhak, Tel Aviv 1946, "Sifriat Poalim" Publishing House (Workers' Book Guild / Hashomer Hatzair Palestine), printing house "Ha-Sefer Ha-Tzair". [1]
- Zylbertal Mieczysław [Zartal Moshe], במחיצתו של קורצ'אק (Be-mechicato shel Korczak / In the Presence of Korczak), Tel Aviv 1949 [text completed in military tents in the desert in 1944], "Sifriat Poalim" Publishing House / Kibbutz Ein Shemer. [1]
- Mortkowicz-Olczakowa Hanna, Janusz Korczak, Kraków 1949, J. Mortkowicz Publishing House [copy from the initial print run of 5,100 copies], subsequent expanded editions: Warsaw 1957–1978, "Czytelnik" Publishing Cooperative. [1]
Brief Methodological Note for Researchers (For use in footnotes):
- Citation for Appenszlak (1946): The book was entirely completed in Palestine as early as 1944, based on the Polish notes and personal memories of the author from the circles of the weekly EWA and Nasz Przegląd. The Polish manuscript entrusted to Władysław Broniewski for publication in Poland in 1946 was irretrievably lost among his papers. Contemporary research into the text requires an analysis of the 1946 Hebrew edition. [1]
- Citation for Zylbertal / Zartal (1949): Memories of unique factual value, written down directly in military tents in the Middle Eastern desert in 1944 under the impact of the first news regarding the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. It was published in book form in 1949 by the publishing house of the leftist Hashomer Hatzair movement. It contains the authentic, rare text of Janusz Korczak’s jubilee essay titled Jubilee of Action from December 1938. [1]
- Citation for Mortkowicz-Olczakowa (1949): The first complete post-war biographical account published in Poland. It was released by the prestigious pre-war publishing house of Jakub Mortkowicz (the author's father). This biography is the first in history to introduce the accounts of eyewitnesses to the Holocaust from Warsaw and the Warsaw Ghetto (including my father Michał Wróblewski – "Pan Misza").
