Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak (pen name of Henryk Goldszmit, 1878–1942) trained as a physician at the University of Warsaw before dedicating his life to child welfare. He directed the Dom Sierot orphanage for Jewish children from 1912 until its liquidation by the Nazis in 1942, developing the institutional practices — children's parliaments, peer courts, student-run newspapers — that became the philosophical foundation for the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. His major works include How to Love a Child (1919), The Child's Right to Respect (1929), and the children's novels King Matt the First (1923) and Kaytek the Wizard (1933). On August 5 or 6, 1942, he refused multiple offers of personal escape and accompanied approximately 192 children from his orphanage to Treblinka, where they were all murdered. UNESCO established the Janusz Korczak Chair in his honor, and his legacy continues to shape global discourse on children's rights, education, and the ethics of care.