Poland Honors Warsaw Ghetto Hero Janusz Korczak on 70th Anniversary of Death
Polish government officials unveiled a memorial plaque in
Warsaw in honor of Warsaw Ghetto hero Janusz Korczak.
Sunday's unveiling took place exactly 70 years after
German soldiers sent Korczak and 192 Jewish orphans to their deaths in Treblinka,
a Nazi extermination camp.
Korczak, director of the Dom Sierot orphanage for Jewish
children, declined help from friends in the Polish underground who offered to
hide him. He insisted on staying with the children and orphanage staff.
During the ceremony, representatives of Poland’s Ministry
of Education and the Ministry of Culture read aloud a letter written by
Poland’s first lady, Anna Komorowska. They laid wreaths at a statue of Korczak
situated near the plaque.
The plaque was installed on the site of the last location
of Korczak's orphanage, in the area that Nazi forces declared as the city’s
Jewish ghetto.
Sunday's ceremony was part of a series of commemorative
events in the framework of Korczak Year, a government-sponsored campaign headed
by Komorowska.
In addition to Korczak, the children and the orphanage
staff, some 6,400 people were deported on Aug. 5, 1942 to Treblinka from the
Warsaw Ghetto.
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