{"id":1328,"date":"2020-11-18T11:50:47","date_gmt":"2020-11-18T16:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theelman.com\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2021-11-19T12:27:21","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T17:27:21","slug":"let-them-eat-cake-this-national-childrens-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theelman.com\/index.php\/2020\/11\/18\/let-them-eat-cake-this-national-childrens-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Let Them Eat Cake This National Childrens Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Have you heard about a fellow named Janus Korczak.  No I thought not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bear with me here.  Janus Korczak across Europe and in other parts of the world is known as the father of Childrens Rights.  Born in Poland he was a Jewish Pediatrician who established an orphanage of his own design in 1911-12.  The orphanage was as much a \u201cRepublic of Children\u201d as it was a form of residential care.  It operated with its own childrens parliament, its own childrens court.  Children in the orphanage produced their own national radio show, their own newspaper.  The orphanage and Korczak became world renowned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have heard of him most likely you have heard the story of his demise.  Korczaks orphanage was located in Warsaw.  When the Nazis invaded Poland. Korczak and the children he cared for were forced into the Jewish Ghetto.  When the Ghetto was liquidated, when the people who lived there were forced to the gas chambers of Aushwitz and Treblinka and murdered, Korczak was told by the authorities that he would be spared due to his celebrity and work.  Famously Korczak refused.  There are a number of accounts of him leading the children of his orphanage, calm and strong,  through the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto .  Dressed in their best clothes, hand in hand the children walked. They arrived at the trains where they would be taken to Treblinka. Korczak died in the gas chambers with the children in 1942.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is not the story I remember the most.  Heroic and dramatic as it is.  I had the good fortune of helping to publish in English an account of a former child of Korzcaks orphanage.  ShlomoNadal in his nineties, living in Israel wanted to pay homage to the orphanage and the manner it was run that he felt without a doubt saved his life.  The book \u201cTaking Root\u201d can still be found on the Ontario Child Advocate archive page at www.ocaarchive.ca<\/a>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shlomo would recollect many things about his life in the home.  He remembered for instance, and I am paraphrasing, that from time to time Korczak would leave the orphanage as the children were sleeping, row upon row, in their beds.  He would visit bakeries in the Ghetto.  He would ask for donations of sweets and cake. These deserts were hard to come by in the Ghetto and very rare for children alone in the world except for each other .  He would return with the treasure.  As the children were sleeping he would place a small piece of cake on the corner of each child\u2019s bed.  Shlomo remembered the joy of finding the treat.  \u201cThe cake\u201d he said \u201ctasted like love\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That story hit my heart and my head. It reminded me of the time that a Deputy Minister said to me \u201cIrwin what do you want me to do with this?  We cant legislate love!\u201d as I spoke about what children really need from us.  Korczak reminds me of how a young person responded to that Deputy Minister. \u201cDeputy.  Itstrue you cant legislate love but you can legislate the conditions in which love can flourish\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We celebrate National Childrens Day, November 20, the anniversary of the United Nations Convention On The Rights of the Child, the Convention that Dr Janus Korczak inspired.  I believe that every right under that convention represents a way in which, when afforded . increases the chance for a child to find the love that will nurture them.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How difficult it is for love to flourish when a child has no safe water to drink.  How difficult it is for love to flourish when a child is surrounded by racism.  How difficult  it isfor love to flourish when a child is not seen and not heard\u2026.I urge you not to wait speak up, speak out, work to create the conditions in which love can flourish.  It is not your responsibility to change the world, yet you are not exempt from trying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you heard about a fellow named Janus Korczak.  No I thought not.  Bear with me here.  Janus Korczak across Europe and in other parts of the world is known as the father of Childrens Rights.  Born in Poland he was a Jewish Pediatrician who established an orphanage of his own design in 1911-12.  The orphanage was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theelman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theelman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theelman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theelman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theelman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theelman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1558,"href":"https:\/\/theelman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theelman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theelman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theelman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}