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Right to Childhood - in memory of Janusz Korczak

Seminar topic and link to poland 1978 onwards

Ever since one student proposed to study Janusz Korczak, the seminars I gave as student tutor at the Institute for Science of Religion at the Free University of Berlin altered their structure. It meant taking up with the Institute Janusz Korczak in Warszawa, Polen. It became the main address when food and medical transports were organized once martial law was declared in 1981.

Korczak was first doctor, and then became director of two orphanages. He perished together with 200 children once the Jewish Ghetto in Warschau was erased to the ground.

As a doctor he valued the observations a mother would make of her child since a doctor has only statistics and long term developments in mind.

When writng for children stories, he would also read them in the evening over the radio. They all loved him: this writer doctor.

Two books are outstanding: The Right to love, and the Right to be respected. Both are not merely legal terms when approaching a child, for Janusz Korczak implied that when a child cries, one does not know if that is because of a recent incidence e.g. fight with other boys, or because that child feels thousand years of persecution?

Hatto Fischer

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