ISADORE HOLLANDER [1-1-3]
From the Collection of the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive
Yes. This is when I fell down. These are the memories that I left with me.
But there were other things, the life is only what parents used to tell me, about anti-
Semitism in France.
JF: They did feel anti-Semitism?
IH: They felt they couldn’t observe Passover, the seder, with open windows.
They were breaking the glass, you know, the windows, throwing stones in. This was
already in 1920, those years. So, anyway, my father didn’t trust anybody, and he went back
in a short time. Within four months, three to four months, he passed away.
JF: What town did he return to?
IH: To Poland? Bendin. B-E-, I’ll spell it in, it’s plain with the way I talk, in
Yiddish. B-E-N-D-I-N. It’s in Yiddish. But in Polish, it was with a “Z-I.”
JF: Yes.
IH: But let it be in Yiddish, Bendin. I think it, only, gentile people won’t listen
to that. Probably mostly Jewish people, probably. Bendin. Now he passed away in 1923 and
we were left two orphans with my mother. And it was very difficult for my mother to start
up life on her own. She was a seamstress. She worked to provide us children with food and
whatever she could. And it lasted four years. After four years of being a widow, she
remarried. And it happened, it didn’t turn out to be the right marriage, which she had two other
children with, from the second marriage. And...
JF: What do you mean it didn’t turn out right?
IH: It didn’t turn out; the marriage wasn’t a success. It wasn’t a good one, but
she had two children. As a child, I was seven years of age, and I was very jealous.
Whatever she did, even though I didn’t know my first father, but it was a jealousy. I loved
my mother, very. I was 25 years of age and I still cried after my mother, and I still, it’s still
not that, to forget. But after she married, then she had two children. My mother was forced
to send me, to give me away to an orphanage.
JF: Why is that?
IH: Because my stepfather, not that I was grown up enough that I should
understand that I couldn’t get along with him, but it was a mistreat. She had only one child
with him at that time. I had an older sister, which she was four years older, and she was 11
years of age. But it was a mistreat. It was a stepfather, and he didn’t treat my mother right.
He didn’t treat us children and me, being accepted to an orphanage, was the best thing
that had ever happened to me. It was a very well establishment, well-known in Europe,
all over Poland and Europe. And it was established with the Charter by one of the well-
known Jewish people in Warsaw which he wrote, and he was a director of an orphanage,
Janusz Korczak.1 And...
JF: He was also, then, responsible for the establishment...
IH: No, he wasn’t, but we accepted his charter, how to raise children, how to
train us, how to make us good people, educated people, because he used a charter.
Children have to have a charter, on how to act. When I was 11 years of age, I was a president
from, I was the president of the board. And I ran an organization, like a children’s
organization. I read a constitution with paragraphs. And we all had duties as children. One
child had to learn how to cook. Two children had to know how to make breakfast for the
rest of the children. We were boys and girls. We were about 75 children in the orphanage.
JF: This constitution, you wrote or you read?
IH: No, this was written and adopted, from Janusz.
JF: I see.
IH: Korczak.
JF: I see.
IH: He was the one who wrote the constitution for children...
JF: I see.
IH: To govern an institution, like orphans. Now every institution has their own
constitution, their own by-laws, and laws. But this was given and then we adopted it, by
the well-known neurologist who became interested in the well-being of children all over Poland and
advocated advanced progressive ideas. He became head of an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto and perished with the children.
Janusz, from Janusz Korczak. And we did very well, and it did to me special being there,
for the time, till the age of 15. It did very good, because I was educated. I went seven years
to public school. I went three years to night school to finish like a...
JF: Like high school?
IH: Yeah, to the grade of high school. And being taught a trade as a tailor. And...
JF: You said you were president of the...
IH: I was being elected...
JF: Your, the group.
IH: Every year. Every year we had an election. We changed. One year when I
was president, the other year I could have been a secretary. We changed. We had a group,
and maybe the third year I wasn’t on the board. Because we had 75 to 80 children in the
orphanage. So it changes, but everybody had a duty, from the children, to clean the rooms
we slept, to clean the bathrooms, to wash the dishes, to prepare breakfast, to give out dinner,
to stay at the dinner and give out the dinner for the children, to hang the laundry. Duties
were for every child to do. We played theaters. I was awarded when I was eight years of
age. I was awarded for playing the theater...
JF: You were an actor.
IH: In the show. And in comedy and any other thing. And I myself have a
very good sense of humor, and I am very liked by people in a short, many people, in a very
short time I am liked by people. And, but that’s life, the way it’s supposed to be, I think so.
It’s the way I was taught.
JF: It s eems like you feel that you were taught a great deal of these
characteristics at the orphanage.
IH: Absolutely. It gave me a good deed. That’s a shame that I couldn’t use any
better ways, to be more educated going to school, but it didn’t, time didn’t permit. I wanted
to grow up fast, to start to earn a living and help my mother.
JF: Were you seeing her during those years?
IH: I, yes, we were allowed every weekend, Saturday afternoon, to go home to
see parents. Children who didn’t have anybody to see, one child took the other.
JF: So you must have gone with someone?
IH: And we went, I went to see my mother. I went to see my aunt and I went to
see my grandmother, one of my grandmother’s, my father’s mother. I used to go every
Shabbas. And she had for me put away fruit, and anything she grew, the apples. She was,
but I was the only orphan, and she just, I was like an eye, an apple in her eye. She watched
my yahrzeit I shouldn’t miss, after my father. And in the orphanage did the same thing. We
were educated every one in Yiddish and in those years we were allowed Hebrew. And the
time went by till I was 15 and I had to step out from there.
JF: Were you also, you mentioned that you were educated in Yiddish and
Hebrew?
IH: In Yiddish, very well in you know, Chumash and
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| Lista mieszkańców Bedzina z okresu okupacji. Na ulicy Sienkiewicza, gdzie mieścił się Dom Sierot kierowany wg. zasad korczakowskich, mieszkały dwie siostry Kalkopf. Przywiezione do szpitali szwedzkich białymi statkami opowiadały o swoim spotkaniu z Korczakiem, gdy odwiedził ich sierociniec. |
Brakuje opracowań o rozprzestrzenieniu "Pedagogiki i Dydaktyki" Janusza Korczaka przed Zagładą.
Istnieje wiele opracowań na temat pedagogiki i dydaktyki Janusza Korczaka po Drugiej wojnie światowej.
Oprócz sławy Korczaka, jego pism pedagogicznych, głównymi, naturalnymi propagatorami jego systemu i myśli pedagogicznych Doktora byli bursiści.
*Dydaktyka – jedna z głównych gałęzi nauk pedagogicznych, która zajmuje się procesami nauczania i uczenia się, wszelkimi przedmiotami na kolejnych poziomach tych procesów, od przedszkola do studiów wyższych, a także mającymi miejsce poza instytucjami oświatowymi, przy zwykłych czynnościach.
