Korczak and Sharpening Pencils from Both Sides – Standing on Guard for the Fleeting Thought
[Caption for Photo 1]
Precision in the service of inspiration. A 1930s mechanical desk pencil sharpener with a hand crank, enclosed in a black bakelite housing, alongside a cult-classic soft graphite pencil (the A.W. Faber "Bonanza" 1329 series), symmetrically sharpened on both sides. This straightforward, reversible technical solution guaranteed Janusz Korczak uninterrupted focus, allowing him to instantly safeguard the flow of his thoughts a fraction of a second after a core snapped or his fountain pen nib ran dry.
Precision in the service of inspiration. A 1930s mechanical desk pencil sharpener with a hand crank, enclosed in a black bakelite housing, alongside a cult-classic soft graphite pencil (the A.W. Faber "Bonanza" 1329 series), symmetrically sharpened on both sides. This straightforward, reversible technical solution guaranteed Janusz Korczak uninterrupted focus, allowing him to instantly safeguard the flow of his thoughts a fraction of a second after a core snapped or his fountain pen nib ran dry.
[Caption for Photo 2]
The collision of ink and graphite. The first page of an original letter from Janusz Korczak to Józek Arnon (Halpern), dated December 7, 1933 (from the collection of the Beit Lohamei HaGetaot). In the penultimate line of the text, precisely within the word "energicznie" (energetically), the rich black ink abruptly runs out. Unwilling to interrupt his train of thought ahead of his upcoming journey to Palestine, the Old Doctor abandons the pen without a moment's hesitation and concludes the page using a pre-sharpened soft pencil. Thanks to the pliability of the graphite, the calligraphic line retains its thickness and shading, rendering this transition nearly invisible to an untrained eye.
The collision of ink and graphite. The first page of an original letter from Janusz Korczak to Józek Arnon (Halpern), dated December 7, 1933 (from the collection of the Beit Lohamei HaGetaot). In the penultimate line of the text, precisely within the word "energicznie" (energetically), the rich black ink abruptly runs out. Unwilling to interrupt his train of thought ahead of his upcoming journey to Palestine, the Old Doctor abandons the pen without a moment's hesitation and concludes the page using a pre-sharpened soft pencil. Thanks to the pliability of the graphite, the calligraphic line retains its thickness and shading, rendering this transition nearly invisible to an untrained eye.
Pan Misza, my father, who was an educator under Korczak, told me that Korczak used pencils sharpened on both sides. I hadn't thought about it for years, although a few years ago I took a photograph of a pencil prepared in this way. Sharpening pencils on both sides is a popular practice used to increase efficiency and workflow fluidness. No interruptions: when one graphite point breaks or dulls, you simply flip the pencil over. Perhaps the most critical aspect of this for Korczak was the continuity of his focus. He did not have to interrupt his writing to search for a pencil sharpener.
Korczak wrote most often with a fountain pen (ink). Reading his original letters, those left untranscribed in books, I always admire his style, the varying thicknesses, and the distinct shapes of his lines. Only recently did I discover a highly peculiar situation within his correspondence: a sudden transition from ink to pencil graphite. These transitions are almost invisible because Korczak perfectly maintained the size of the letters, the variable line thickness, and the beautiful shading reminiscent of a traditional fountain pen.
I have described these specific transitions from a fountain pen to a pencil as the Doctor's fear that his thoughts would escape him. That is why Korczak always kept well-sharpened pencils ready at hand. The graphite in these pencils was pliable, soft enough to draw a variable line—meaning one that becomes thicker under pressure and thinner when released. Such pencils are designated by the letters HB, B, and 2B.
This technique was directly influenced by the classical rules of pressure in pencil calligraphy: when moving upward, no pressure is applied—the line is then thin and delicate. A downward stroke meant a firmer pressure, causing the soft graphite to leave a thick, dark line. Korczak, writing in great haste, could press down heavily on the pencil even during sideways or upward strokes, exposing the delicate core to fracturing. It was precisely in those moments that he was saved by flipping the double-sided pencil by 180 degrees.
Behind this reliable piece of machinery, however, were the children of the Orphans' Home, who regularly took charge of sharpening the Doctor's pencils. In his journals, the figure of "poczciwy Felek" (the good-natured Felek Grzyb) emerges, who along with other monitors ensured that a freshly sharpened reserve of tools always lay by the inkwell. What exactly did this look like in the 1930s? In the ghetto in 1942, Korczak described his writing conditions in his Diary. The final two sentences are particularly intriguing: A groove has been worn into my finger by this pencil. Only now has it occurred to me that it could be done differently, more comfortably, that it is easier with a pen. This confirms that Korczak was accustomed to pressing down heavily on his pencils, and that even within the ghetto, he remained in possession of two fountain pens.
Now it is the year 1942. May. A chilly May this year. And tonight is the quietest of the quiet. Five o'clock in the morning. The kids are asleep. There are truly two hundred of them. On the right wing is Madame Stefa, I am to the left in the so-called isolation room.
My bed is in the middle of the room. Under the bed, a bottle of vodka. On the nightstand, coarse rye bread and a pitcher of water.
Good-natured Felek sharpened the pencils, each from both sides. I could write with a fountain pen; one was given to me by Hadaska*, the second by a certain papa of a mischievous little son.
A groove has been worn into my finger by this pencil. Only now has it occurred to me that it could be done differently, more comfortably, that it is easier with a pen.
Most institutions, schools, and presumably the Orphans' Home as well, utilized large, crank-operated sharpeners bolted to the desktop or the wall. In the 1930s, these were massive mechanical apparatuses constructed from heavy metals (such as cast iron, steel, or brass) or elegant desktop items crafted from black bakelite. They appeared entirely different from today’s flimsy plastic standards. Inside, there was no simple, flat blade. Instead, they housed two counter-rotating steel cylindrical core-cutters (milling cutters) that shaved the wood and graphite with extreme precision and gentleness. These machines featured a specialized, extendable spring-loaded front panel feed mechanism. One simply had to pull out the front plate, lock the pencil inside the aperture, and the machine would automatically feed and perfectly point the core as the handle crank was spun, leaving the delicate 2B lead completely intact.
Students, fine artists, and boarding scholars who did not have regular access to these heavy desk-bound office machines relied on small pocket-sized pencil sharpeners instead. These were straightforward, conical brass or aluminum implements equipped with a single, replaceable small screw securing a flat blade—a mechanical layout that has survived into the modern era completely unchanged. Razor-blade handles were also immensely popular at the time—flat metallic holders in which an adult or an older student could clamp a conventional shaving razor blade to meticulously carve away the wooden sheath by hand.
For the Old Doctor, this double-sided pencil meticulously sharpened by the children and the bakelite cylindrical cutter machine were integral components of a deeply integrated, mechanical system. Much like the system of duplicating writing using carbon paper and onionskin sheets that I described in an earlier post, all of this was engineered toward a single paramount objective: preserving human thought before it had any chance to vanish forever.
The Ink Hypothesis
It is highly telling that the sudden depletion of ink in the pen occurred precisely on the very last line of the first page in both his letters to Budko and to Arnon. The synchronization of this running dry with the lowermost margin of the first sheet in letters written a decade apart (1923–1933) prompts a fascinating technological hypothesis. A conventional, non-modified dip nib barely provided a reservoir large enough to scratch out a few sentences. Could Korczak have been using a specialized calligraphic nib equipped with an attached clip-on secondary sheet-metal fluid reservoir underneath, which held just enough ink from a single, heavy dip into the inkwell to spread text over exactly one sheet of letter format?
Or—as is equally plausible—was a temperamental early fountain pen responsible? The letters were, after all, written exactly ten years apart (1923–1933). At such a breakneck, frantic pace with which the Doctor chased the flow of his racing thoughts, the pen's early capillary feed system might simply have failed to keep pace with delivering an adequate volume of liquid to the tip. Every single one of us recalls that instinctive childhood reflex of shaking a fountain pen when the split tip suddenly begins to break the line on the paper. Rather than wasting precious moments violently shaking a drying instrument and running the immediate risk of throwing severe ink blots over the correspondence, Korczak, upon crossing into this technological "danger zone" at the foot of the page, preferred to abandon the fountain pen altogether without a second's delay and deploy the double-sided graphite pencil waiting in reserve. The absolute continuity of his inspiration was, above all, the primary imperative.
** Hadaska is likely Hadasa Kaufman. Hadaska was an older ward, and in time, a close female collaborator of Janusz Korczak at the Orphans' Home. She possessed exceptional pedagogical predispositions, due to which the Old Doctor treated her with immense trust. A long letter from Korczak to Hadaska dated March 25, 1942, remains preserved in the archives.
