Jewish Doctor Janusz Korczak Died With 190 Children at Treblinka
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
A Polish court changed the date of death of martyred Polish-Jewish humanitarian, Janusz Korczak, to reflect his death in the Treblinka Nazi death camp.
Lublin District Court on Friday confirmed that Korczak died on Aug. 7, 1942, and not May 9, 1946, as a post-war court had ruled.
The date of death was changed by the court at the request of the Modern Poland Foundation.
Janusz Korczak, the pseudonym of Henryk Goldszmit, was a doctor, teacher, writer and humanitarian. During the Holocaust he ran an orphanage for Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto. Though he was offered sanctuary by the Polish underground, he chose to go with his more than 190 orphaned children when they were transported to Treblinka. He was killed together with the children when they arrived at the death camp on Aug. 7, 1942.
Post-war Polish courts set the dates of those who died during the war, but whose deaths were not officially documented, as one year after the end of the war.
“Leaving the recognition of Henryk Goldszmit’s death as May 9, 1946 distorts the historical reality,” said Judge Katarzyna Makarzec of the Lublin court.
The Modern Poland Foundation brought the case to court because it wants to publish on the Internet the works of Janusz Korczak.
According to Polish law, copyrights expire 70 years after the author’s death. This case has been in court since 2012.
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