The Polish pediatrician who walked into a death camp to protect his children

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 29 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Janusz Korczak was a celebrated author and educator who pioneered children's rights in the early 20th century. When the Nazis forced his Warsaw orphanage into the ghetto, he repeatedly refused offers of sanctuary, choosing instead to accompany his 200 pupils to the Treblinka extermination camp in August 1942.

Born Henryk Goldszmit in Warsaw, Korczak was a pediatrician and pedagogue who transformed how society viewed children. In his 1919 work, How to Love a Child, he articulated fundamental rights for children, including the right to exist in the present and the right to self-determination. He established orphanages that functioned as democratic societies, complete with their own parliaments, courts, and newspapers, such as the weekly Mały Przegląd, which gave children a platform to voice their perspectives.

His literary career was equally influential. Through works like King Matt the First and Kajtuś the Wizard, Korczak used fairy tales to prepare young readers for the complexities of adulthood, governance, and moral responsibility. He was a vocal opponent of corporal punishment, arguing in The Child's Right to Respect that physical discipline merely teaches children to respect power rather than justice, and that such abuse fosters contempt for the weak.

During the Holocaust, Korczak’s commitment to his pupils became his final act. Despite being offered rescue by the Polish underground organization Żegota, he insisted that he could not abandon his charges. Eyewitness accounts, including those saved in the Ringelblum Archive, describe him leading the children to the Umschlagplatz in July and August 1942. He was likely murdered in a gas chamber at Treblinka shortly after arrival.

The legal legacy of his death was only resolved in 2015. For decades, a Polish court had set his official death date as 9 May 1946, a standard placeholder for war victims. The Modern Poland Foundation successfully challenged this in court to establish his death in 1942, a move that placed his extensive body of work into the public domain, ensuring his pedagogical insights remain accessible to future generations.

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