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Zusatztext YALSA Excellence In Nonfiction Award Winner “Painful yet profound.” – Booklist! Starred Review “It’s a harrowing book! complete with harrowing photographs! that’s insightful about connections to other historical events without losing sight of its main topic; its emphasis on youth experience! both in Korczak’s orphanage and elsewhere! adds a dimension often undertreated in other explorations of the topic.” — Bulletin Informationen zum Autor Albert Marrin is a beloved author of numerous works of nonfiction for young readers. His books include Flesh & Blood So Cheap , which was a National Book Award Finalist, and Uprooted , a Siebert Honor Book. Klappentext "This is a Borzoi book"--Copyright page. I exist not to be loved and admired, but to love and act. It is not the duty of those around me to love me. Rather, it is my duty to be concerned about the world, about man. --Janusz Korczak, The Ghetto Years (1942) Starting Out We have little information about Henryk Goldszmit’s life story. Except for his diary, written in the three months before his death, all his personal papers were lost or destroyed during World War II. Much of what we know was recorded by friends and acquaintances, recalling what he had told them, or appears in his letters to them. Even the exact date of his birth is uncertain. This we do know: The future champion of children’s rights was born in Warsaw in July 1878 or 1879--probably 1878. The uncertainty is due to his father’s failure to register his son’s birth, as required by law, for several years. At the time of Henryk’s birth, Poland was not an independent nation. In 1795, aggressive neighbors had banded together to overrun the country. Russia, Austria, and the German state of Prussia divided Poland among themselves. Russia took the lion’s share and declared Warsaw the capital of “Russian Poland.” By falsifying his birthday, Henryk’s father may have hoped to postpone, or even avoid, his son’s being drafted into the army of the Russian czar. Other parents scrimped and saved to send their draft-age sons to America.1 Of Henryk’s ancestors, we know nothing. His father, Jozef Goldszmit, was an attorney specializing in divorce cases. Jozef’s own father, Hirsh Goldszmit, was a beloved country doctor who spoke German fluently and gave his five children Christian-sounding names like Maria and Magdalena. Jozef’s wife, Cecylia Gebicka, had an artisan background; her grandfather was a glazier, a person who puts glass in windows and mirrors. The couple had two children: Henryk and his younger sister, Anna. Anna’s life and fate are a mystery to us. Though not fabulously wealthy, the Goldszmit family was quite comfortable. Thanks to Jozef’s lucrative law practice, they lived in an elegantly furnished apartment in an upscale neighborhood. Servants earned low wages, so the family could easily afford a full-time cook and maid. A French governess saw to the children’s education in a room set aside as a study, outfitted with bookcases, blackboards, and desks. Young Henryk had no friends his own age and played alone with blocks and his sister’s dolls. His snobbish mother thought other children, most of all poor children, were not good enough for her precious darling. Poor children, she insisted, were dirty and smelly, cursed, and fought like alley cats. Henryk’s refuge from boredom was the kitchen, the domain of a wise peasant woman from the countryside. She would sit him on a high stool as if he were “a human being and not a lapdog on a silk cushion.” For hours, she told Polish folktales about dark forests inhabited by magicians and wizards, goblins and heroes. Her stories stirred the child’s imagination, inspiring the master storyteller who’d endear himself to generations of children.2 Henryk’s parents thought their son was ...
