Janusz Korczak , the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit [ 1 ] 22 July or โ 7 August , [ 2 ] was a Polish Jewish pediatrician, educator, children's author and pedagogue known as Pan Doktor "Mr. Doctor" or Stary Doktor "Old Doctor". He was an early children's rights advocate, in drafting a children's constitution. After spending many years working as a principal of an orphanage in Warsaw , he moved in with his orphans when the orphanage was forced to move to the ghetto , despite pleas from friends to flee the country.
He was executed when the entire population of the institution was sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during the Grossaktion Warschau of Korczak was born in Warsaw in He was unsure of his birth date, which he attributed to his father's failure to promptly acquire a birth certificate for him. He did not believe in forcing religion on children.
During the years โ Korczak studied medicine at the University of Warsaw [ 4 ] and also wrote for several Polish language newspapers. After graduation, he became a pediatrician. During the Russo-Japanese War , in โ06 he served as a military doctor. Meanwhile, his book Child of the Drawing Room Dziecko salonu gained him some literary recognition.
In โ08, Korczak went to study in Berlin. In โ, he became a director of Dom Sierot in Warsaw, an orphanage of his own design for Jewish children.
There he formed a kind of republic for children with its own small parliament , court , and a newspaper. He reduced his other duties as a doctor. After the war, he continued his practice in Warsaw. In his book How to Love a Child he defined three basic rights of the child: the right of today, the right of the child over its own death, and the right of the child to be what it wants to be.
