The Teacher Of Warsaw Quotes

Anticipating their calamity and fright when deportation day came (August 6, 1942) he [Henryk Goldszmit, pen name: Janusz Korczak] joined them aboard the train bound for Treblinka, because, he said, he knew his presence would calm them—“You do not leave a sick child in the night, and you do not leave children at a time like this.” A photograph taken at the Umschlagplatz (Transshipment Square) shows him marching, hatless, in military boots, hand in hand with several children, while 192 other children and ten staff members follow, four abreast, escorted by German soldiers. Korczak and the children boarded red boxcars not much larger than chicken coops, usually stuffed with seventy-five vertical adults, though all the children easily fit. In Joshua Perle’s eyewitness account in The Destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, he describes the scene: “A miracle occurred, two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep. Not one of them ran away. None tried to hide. Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, to their father and brother, Janusz Korczak.” In 1971, the Russians named a newly discovered asteroid after him, 2163 Korczak, but maybe they should have named it Ro, the planet he dreamed of. The Poles claim Korczak as a martyr, and the Israelis revere him as one of the Thirty-Six Just Men, whose pure souls make possible the world’s salvation. According to Jewish legend, these few, through their good hearts and good deeds, keep the too-wicked world from being destroyed. For their sake alone, all of humanity is spared. The legend tells that they are ordinary people, not flawless or magical, and that most of them remain unrecognized throughout their lives, while they choose to perpetuate goodness, even in the midst of inferno.

The brave talk from Moscow notwithstanding, the Russian elite itself is probably well aware of the real costs and benefits of its military adventures, which is why it has so far been very careful not to escalate them. Russia has been following the schoolyard-bully principle: pick on the weakest kid, and don’t beat him up too much, lest the teacher intervene. If Putin had conducted his wars in the spirit of Stalin, Peter the Great, or Genghis Khan, then Russian tanks would have long ago made a dash for Tbilisi and Kiev, if not for Warsaw and Berlin. But Putin is neither Genghis nor Stalin. He seems to know better than anyone else that military power cannot go far in the twenty-first century, and that waging a successful war means waging a limited war. Even in Syria, despite the ruthlessness of Russian aerial bombardments, Putin has been careful to minimize the Russian footprint, to let others do all the serious fighting, and to prevent the war from spilling over into neighboring countries.

Why do they hate us so much?" I was thoughtful and took my time answering. It was a question I often asked myself. "I think it's because they don't know us. At their core, racists and anti-Semites are poor, ignorant souls. Fear is what makes hatred and fear comes from not knowing people.

The man who knows not, but knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Shun him. A wise precaution. The man who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a student. Teach him. Definitely. The man who knows, but knows not that he knows, is asleep. Awaken him. That was where he currently found himself. But the man who knows, and knows that he knows, is a teacher. Learn from him. Absolutely.

It is always much easier to live in memories than to be truly submerged in a toxic, strangling reality.

Evil struts about openly and unencumbered, while we must seek out good wherever it is hiding. Evildoers go about their nefarious business in plain sight, and society is forced to react to their insanity, whereas the just strive to do what is necessary without being noticed.

The only thing that mattered to me during the fall of 1941 was getting our children out of the hell that the Nazis had concocted for us in Warsaw.

Encouraging the people we love is the most important job in the world, I think.

Love is what tied me to these children, the kind that is given with no expectations of anything in return. I thought about how Gibran’s prophet said that the only way to really live is to make a temple and a religion of daily life. I, who had been a skeptic for so long, had come to understand that God was in everything. I recommitted to giving myself to the children with joy for whatever time I had left with them. Sacrifice was not enough. I had to invest my whole heart and soul.

The children were grinning with joy like they had before the ghetto. While desolation continued its march to destroy the world we knew and loved outside Dom Sierot, the small, beautiful things of life had filled the room.

We were all equally poor, miserable, and desperate. Perhaps for the first time in history, money, class, and family background did not matter. We were a people united by misfortune and destined to demise.

A man is more than his inheritance, and the greatest legacy we can give our children is our love.

The poor do not have the luxury of pride if they want to feed their children, and I had over two hundred of them.

Love nourishes their souls. People without love are already dead, though they don’t yet know it.

Anyone could have money, and many people would amass large fortunes, but I had two hundred children whom I loved and who loved me. I was undoubtedly the richest man in the Warsaw ghetto.

always wondered how the Israelites reacted when Moses showed up. Maybe he forced them to be free. A people group that has lived enslaved for some time no longer knows how to live in freedom.

Now I was a Jew, an admirer of Jesus, a cursed Pole, a sick doctor, and a pedagogue in hell. I had finally discovered who I really was.

Stefan Zweig’s words about turbulent times: “But, after all, shadows themselves are born of light. And only he who has experienced dawn and dusk, war and peace, ascent and decline, only he has truly lived.

But I am afraid. They are devils, not people.” “They certainly seem that way, my dear, but the saddest part is that they are simple human beings like we are. That one,” I pointed, “is probably a cobbler from Hamburg. And that one,” I signaled another, “a butcher from Berlin. And that fat one is a cook from Frankfurt. They’re just normal people who have been given absolute power.

That is the curse of old empires and cities that have faced a thousand misfortunes. They rely on the fact that calm always returns after the storm. But the Nazis were not just a simple storm, not even a winter front that left old Europe wracked and exhausted. Hitler’s Germans were an eternal winter that allowed no regrowth anywhere.

the conquerors of peoples, the supermen who have created their own morality and have imposed it on the whole world—at the core they are all lightweight. They’re at the top, floating over us, but without real weight. They can’t love because love always means renouncing force. They violate the masses whom they subjugate with their false, populist words.” “From what you’re saying, the only thing that makes life make sense or gives it weight is love.” “Yes, I believe that’s so. But not just any love: true love, which is always a burden, but the heavier the burden, the more fulfilling life will be.

Friends are never truly separated. They are connected forever by the bonds of the past, the time that cannot be stolen from them and that will return every time suffering or loneliness evokes it.

We don’t turn anyone away, Jew or Christian, baptized or not. Finally, here in my late seventies, I understand the true worth of human life.” His words moved me. He was not apologizing but rather testifying to the power of love over hatred and rage. That priest had become a minister of souls for whom surnames, customs, and creeds had ceased to matter.

Each single human being saved was the entire human race saved.

Why do they hate us so much?” I was thoughtful and took my time answering. It was a question I often asked myself. “I think it’s because they don’t know us. At their core, racists and anti-Semites are poor, ignorant souls. Fear is what makes hatred, and fear comes from not knowing people.

The possibility existed that all this suffering might have some purpose, some meaning. That was one of the reasons that had brought me to a measure of faith. I refused to believe that existence was just snuffed out and that we turned into nothing more than dust. Perhaps for people who had been happy and successful, the world made sense, but what about the millions who died shortly after birth or who had not known even a moment’s happiness? And did the deplorable actions of those who had turned the world into an inferno just go unpunished? And what of those who had given themselves in body and soul to others? My family had never practiced the Jewish faith, and I cared little for organized religions and all the ceremonial rites. For me, talking with God was like breathing, a nearly unconscious act.

One never gets used to living in the midst of pure evil.” “The day we do will be the death of us, at least of our souls.

My dear doctor, evil is not from the outside; it nests deep in our hearts. The sooner we learn that truth, the easier it will be to put an end to it. Each of us has to be transformed into something better so the world can become a place worth living in.

three very different, and yet ironically similar, men. Marek, Captain Neumann, and Father Godlewski were each trying to do good in their own way. One was a desperate freedom fighter; another clung to the last vestiges of his humanity; and the last was paying for the sins of his past. Godlewski’s was a heavy burden, that of admitting he had been wrong while he had tried to do what was right.

Reading is liberating. All throughout my youth, and the two times I’ve been in prison, I devoured books like the world was ending and each page turned would bring me closer to freedom.

We the children, with God’s help, want to be happy, and we know that the only way to be happy is to also secure the happiness of those around

I felt weak, but I mustered the strength to continue the ceremony and said, “Our work as educators is to cultivate love for human beings, for justice, truth, and hard work. Love is the foundation of everything we are. We are born in love, our mothers and fathers raise us by love, we learn how to love, and this shapes us into true human beings. Justice is what allows us to live together. Justice is our defense against the evil actions of others. Truth is like a torch that guides us through dark nights and one day will defeat all the shadows. We work together as one for food, but above all for unity. The forces of hatred will never break our spirits. May God keep us all.

The poor child Amal was so hopeful about getting a letter from the king—and I, so hopeful for a word that would free us all from our terrible horror, from the interminable nightmare. I thought about the cemetery where my parents lay. They, too, had flowers over their chests for when they awoke. One day the King would come to see them. He would raise us all up out of our beds, and we would celebrate together with the biggest party in the world. I longed for that with all my heart. It was the only thing left to hope for. Chapter 40

Most would be forced to leave the ghetto on the trains, and those who stayed a little longer would only be postponing the inevitable. It is hard to be born and learn how to die. We are never prepared to abandon this world.

I sat at my desk and wrote for just a few moments. They were my last words. What else could be said? The children were waiting. Perhaps Jesus’s words about becoming like a child were the secret for saving a world that had gone up in flames.

The last violin notes rang in my mind’s ears. I closed my eyes and beheld the face of the Teacher, the Old Doctor, my friend. I vowed to keep his memory alive and share the treasure of his wisdom so that everyone could know that good does triumph over evil.

Korczak’s actual diary is short and encompasses only a few months of 1942. While several passages from it served as inspiration, The Teacher of Warsaw is a work of fiction. It is based on the direct or indirect testimony of Korczak himself and people who knew him.

Each generation is like one of nature’s seasons, repeating itself in endless cycles. It’s an eternal rebirth starting with spring, when everything seems solid and unmovable and people think things will always be like that. Then with summer a new generation awakens and turns everything on its head. Their provocative creativity questions all established notions, and then their heyday gives way to autumn. The next generation rediscovers individualism and the human capacity to achieve personal goals, but they neglect the social fabric until the most dangerous and destructive generation shows up. The winter generation exists in a seemingly unprecedented social crisis; it’s marked by mass confusion and the complete destruction of all that seemed solid.

Long ago I had learned that the only way to knock down the walls of prejudice and hatred toward difference was coexisting and building friendships that allowed the children to fight and then be reconciled again.

But we had to keep to our schedules and rhythms or else everything would come crashing down. The only way to hold on to normalcy was to pretend it existed until we all believed it did.

Letter to Menoeceus. I had memorized it as a boy: Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more.

Of course you’ll miss them. We all need to have things that keep us grounded here on earth. Otherwise we’d be a bunch of hot air balloons just floating around.” “Yes, my friend, the lightness of existing is difficult to embrace, but, you know, what ties us to this world—or, at least, what ought to—is very different. Love is what gives weight to life. My books are not actually what’s important. It’s my love of them that is.” We

The Nazis were beating us. They were taking away the only noble, beautiful thing each of us has: our compassion and mercy. When anything goes, nothing is worth it anymore.

The poor orphans needed much more than food and clothes. Their souls were so withered and numb that a simple smile or a story read aloud softly lit up their faces and improved their health as much as ghetto existence allowed.

I thought of the hundreds of children I had tried to save over the years. Many of them were now dying because of the ghetto’s harsh conditions, but the work had still been worth the effort. After all, what is existence? Hardly a minute of infinity; we are like shadows God has entrusted with a flame that will never go out.

One more day. I did not need to wear myself out; each day had enough trouble of its own. Today was unique and would never happen again.

If people outside the ghetto could see us, they’d think we’re the unluckiest people in the world. They may be right, but what matters is how we see ourselves. The way we see ourselves is the way everyone else will end up seeing us.

I wondered how it was possible for two people to want to get married in our present circumstances, but that is, after all, what life is about. We must keep believing, fighting, and celebrating. The day we stop, we are as good as dead. Love is the strongest antidote to despair.

the strength of love—more powerful than any force on earth—coursed through my body. Evil was driven back for those moments, and we brushed against something like happiness.

The Judenrat estimated that nearly one hundred thousand people had died since the ghetto had been established, most of starvation and disease. Those of us who were left knew that most would not make it through another winter. We were too weak to survive the cold again.

We walked on without hurry, grateful for what the day’s outing had sent our way and heartened to see a small light of hope shining in the eyes of one hungry child. I knew he would always remember us. The best lesson we can ever teach is to show love to those around us without expecting anything in return.

He always told me that freedom ended right where fear began, which is why I have never been afraid. What can men do to me? They have no power over the immortal soul. They can punish the body, but my old hide is worth little, and I know it will not hold out much longer.

The man who knows not, but knows not that he knows not, is a fool . Shun him. The man who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a student . Teach him. The man who knows, but knows not that he knows, is asleep. Awaken him. But the man who knows, and knows that he knows, is a teacher. Learn from him. - Persian proverb