Holocaust Poetry: 5.8.1942 In Memory of Janusz Korczak by Jerzy Ficowski

Jerzy Ficowski's poem 5.8.1942 In Memory of Janusz Korczak can be found in Hilda Schiff's book Holocaust Poetry.

The poem is an elegy to the final act of Janusz Korczak, a Polish-Jewish pediatrician, educator, author who established and ran orphanages in Warsaw for 30 years.

As the principal for children houses (orphanages), a doctor, a publisher of a children's newspaper, as well as an author and expert witness in court, Korczak fought for a better life for children.

When the Nazis created the Warsaw ghetto in 1939, the orphanage was inside the ghetto walls. Korczak lived with the children and his staff under inhumane conditions and although he was offered the chance to escape Korczak refused, choosing to stay with the children.

On August 5th 1942 the entire orphanage, including children and staff, with a thousand others from the ghetto, were marched to the railroad marshaling yard, to be transported east to the Treblinka Concentration Camp. 

 A person in the crowd witnessed the extraordinary drama and lived to describe it (the quotes are taken from an article about Korczak on the website of the Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota):

"Forced into tight formation, body against body, driven by guards wielding whips on all sides, the solid mass of humanity was forced to run toward the train platform. Suddenly the Commandant ordered the Secret Police to pull back . ...

"At the head of a thin line was Korczak! No, how could it be? The scene I shall never forget. In contrast to the mass of humanity being driven like animals to slaughter, there appeared a group of children marching together in formation. They were the orphanage children walking four abreast in a line behind Korczak. His eyes were lifted to heaven. Even the military personnel stood still and saluted. When the Germans saw Korczak, they asked, `Who is that man?' "

Another survivor, who succeeded in fleeing from the railroad platform, remembered the scene as Korczak and the children were put into the cattle cars.

"These children did not cry, these innocent little beings did not even weep. Like sick sparrows they snuggled up to their teacher, their caregiver, their father and their brother Janusz Korczak, that he might protect them with his weak, emaciated body . ..."

The train took them all to the death camp at Treblinka where Korczak, his staff and the children all perished in the gas chambers.

5.8.1942  IN MEMORY OF JANUSZ KORCZAK

What did the Old Doctor do

in the cattle wagon

bound for Treblinka on the fifth of August

over the few hours of the bloodstream

over the dirty river of time

I do not know

what did Charon of his own free will

the ferryman without an oar do

did he give out to the children

what remained of gasping breath

and leave for himself

only frost down the spine

I do not know

did he lie to them for instance

in small

numbing doses

groom the sweaty little heads

for the scurrying lice of fear

I do not know

yet for all that yet later yet here

in Treblinka

all their terror all the tears

were against him

oh it was only now

just so many minutes say a lifetime

whether a little or a lot

I was not there I do not know

suddenly the Old Doctor saw

the children had grown

as old as he was

older and older

that was how fast they had to go grey as ash

Jerzy Ficowski

(translated by Keith Bosley)