Janusz Korczak before the sionism

• Grant number: 14/50273-6
• Support type: Regular Research Grants - Publications - Books published in Brazil
• Duration: June 01, 2014 - May 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal researcher: Ana Szpiczkowski
• Grantee: Ana Szpiczkowski
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The present work intends to study Janus Korczak and his relation with judaism and sionism. Korczak was a polish Jew, borned in Warsaw, in 1878, who belonged to a family of assimilated scholars and felt truly polish. He was a physician, an educator, a journalist, a writer and founder of two orphanages that followed the democratic principles of education: one of them Jewish, Don Sierot (1912-1942) and the other one Christian, Nasz Dom (1919-1936). The analysis of correspondences, interviews, and other documents related to judaism, sionism and the land of Israel, allowed us to acknowledge Korczaks vision of the Jewish question in an anti-semitic Poland of the 19th and 20th centuries. The documents analyses referred mainly to the two trips that Korczak made to the land of Israel, and included his personal impressions of the benefits of the Land, as well as the difficulties of adaptation to this ancestral ground, and of leaving the homeland for good. Although Korczak intended to emigrate to Palestine, he was not able to do it, because as a victim of the Shoah, he was sent, with the 200 Jewish children and the teachers of his orphanage, from the Guefto of Warsaw to the train that would lead them to Treblinka. (AU)