Chapter 1 Children’s Rights in Health Care and the Legacy of Janusz Korczak

Arie de Bruin

What a fever, a cough, or nausea is for the physician, so a smile, a tear or a blush should be for the pedagogue. Medicine is concerned only with curing the sick child, but an educator could nurture the whole child.1 janusz korczak ∵

1 Introduction

Janusz Korczak (1878–1942)​ was a Polish-Jewish​ pediatrician, pedagogue, ed- ucator and writer and is considered to be one of the founders of children’s rights. He is said to have once described himself as ‘a physician by training, a pedagogue by chance, a writer by passion, and a psychologist by necessity’. Korczak became a leading advocate for children and is seen as the father of the idea that children also have rights –​ human rights. His thinking had a profound impact on the drafting of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)2 and continues to influence the child-​friendly pro- grams of the Council of Europe.3 His message was about respect for children and their inherent value as human beings, but also for their capacity and competence. Though continuously practicing as a physician and directing orphanages, he was also a writer. Korczak was one of those thinkers who was ahead of his time. Some of his ideas are still not fully understood and they are relevant to the work for children’s rights today in education and health care as well.

1 J. Korczak: Hoe houd je van een kind, Het internaat, Utrecht: Erven J. Bijleveld, 1986, p. 169. 2 See W. Pelzer: Janusz Korczak, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1987. 3 Council of Europe: Janusz Korczak, Le droit de l’enfant au respect, Strasbourg, 2009, pp. 5–8.​

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004327573_003 16 de Bruin

In this chapter, Janusz Korczak the person is discussed. Furthermore, the relevance of his work is explained in view of matters that concern the protec- tion of the fundamental interests of the child in health care.

2 Brief Biography

Korczak was born in 1878 as Henryk Goldszmit, in an assimilated Jewish fam- ily in , . His father was a successful lawyer and he grew up in a prosperous family, where children were shielded from the ‘hard’ outside world. This changed when Henryk was 11 years of age and his father had a serious mental breakdown, which ruined his family. His father died and he was mainly brought up by his mother and other women in a rather depressing atmosphere. At a young age, he learned that children are not always respected by adults or given the physical and psychological space to flourish. In spite of the poverty he managed to write novels and get them pub- lished. This was when he started using his pen name, Janusz Korczak, the name by which he is best known. However, having concluded that ‘writ- ing is only words, medicine is deeds’, he focused on medical studies. At this stage he was becoming more and more committed to the fate of neglected ­children. He specialized in pediatrics and was a popular physician in the communi- ty because of his compassion for the poor children who lived in the Warsaw slums. His experiences in various wars during his young life had a big influ- ence. As a young physician, he was enlisted in the Russian army during the Russian-​Japanese war. At that time, he wrote:

War is an abomination. Especially, because no one reports how many children are hungry, ill-treated,​ and left without protection. Before a na- tion goes to war it should come to a halt and think of the innocent chil- dren who will be injured, killed, or orphaned. No cause, no war is worth depriving children of their natural right to happiness. One must think first of the child before making revolutions.4

From 1904, he sometimes acted as supervisor at summer camps for poor chil- dren. In his book Kolonie Letnie,5 he describes hard experiences as an educator

4 J. Korczak: Über den Krieg (1905), Sozialmedizinische Schriften, Sämtliche Werke no. 8; Coun- cil of Europe, 2009, op. cit., p. 6. 5 J. Korczak: Hoe houd je van een kind, Het internaat, 1986, op. cit., pp. 123–​176.