Academic literature on the topic 'Dom Sierot (Warsaw, Poland)'

The purpose of this paper is to present how a selection of current school leaders in two countries, other than Poland, the country in which he lived, perceive the legacy of Janusz Korczak. These two countries are the United Kingdom and Canada. Its role is to present these interpretations for debate and discussion among other school leaders and practitioners, who claim inspiration from him worldwide. We have not suggested that there is a correct or incorrect way to interpret Korczak, rather we are simply interested in how current practitioners perceive his work. The first part of this article is a brief summary of key aspects from the life and works of Janusz Korczak that have entered educational conversation within the United Kingdom and the wider Anglophone world. This has often been through writings by and for teachers or books written for schools, rather than academic texts or even Korczak’s original works. Key aspects of his life story presented here are: those years leading the orphanage ‘Dom Sierot’, and most especially the final months of his life in the Warsaw ghetto, and the last recorded events of his life, including his refusal to go to Theresienstadt and his ultimate death in Treblinka. We also present in this section, because of an expectation that schools may have engaged with these, his views on how societal structures being designed by adults disadvantage children; and his valuing of children’s voices, as well as his views on the problematic nature of authority. This paper is a discussion of four linked case studies. Participants for this study were four school leaders, two from the UK and two from Canada. The schools they lead are schools that in public facing aspects of their schools, such as school webpages or public vision statements, refer explicitly to the influence of Janusz Korczak. The method of data collection used within this study was unstructured interviews with school leaders. Through this process we discovered that there are commonalities in how his legacy has been perceived. These included, for all, intertwining his life and work and in doing so presenting him as a role model to children and teachers. Other aspects of his influence focused on student voice, the breaking down of hierarchy and the enabling of creativity.

Since the baptism of Poland up to 1918, the social care of orphans was diversified. Until the annexations, the care of parentless children in the Polish territories had been environmental and stemmed from voluntary and charitable actions taken up mostly by the Church. The creation of children wards in hospitals and shelters, and the establishment of children’s households in Warsaw as a result of father G. Baudounin’s initiative, might be considered as prototype actions in the complete institutional care of orphaned children. However, during the time of annexations, the situation of orphans became significantly diversified because it depended on the invaders’ policy and the citizens’ activity. Thus, on the one hand, it was created by the occupying country, on the other, it was shaped by tradition. In the territories of each of the conquerors there were periods of liberalization of law, which rendered it possible, at least to some degree, to follow Polish concepts. These were mostly based on philanthropy, charity religious groups, associations and individuals. It needs to be stated that at the beginning of the 21st century, in all of the partitioned territories, the orphanages were governed by obsolete regulations although tried out in other countries. In each of the annexed parts of Poland, the educational and caring actions stemmed from the acquired legislative system. Under the Austrian occupation it was the commune that had the duty of taking care of the parentless children as it was stated in the act passed on 3rd December 1863. In the Prussian part of Poland, the commune’s duty of taking care of the orphans was stated in the act passed in July 1870. It is worth mentioning that the legislative in Prussia was very similar to the Austrian one. The only difference between them was their effectiveness – it was far more efficient in the Prussian province. Under the Russian invasion the regulations concerning the orphanages were quite different. Since the resolution from 1817, the public care of orphans relied on the good will of the society. It was not until the ruling from 1870 that the city councils of public philanthropy, supervising such institutions, were brought to life. At the turn of the 19th century in Poland, especially among social and educational activists, the problem of children’s care became more popular. The necessity of providing care through social actions based on the law was discerned. During World War I, the problem of orphanhood achieved a new dimension, the so-called war orphanhood. It was not effectively taken care of until the end of the war.

Casimir the Great’s Flying Circus presents: ‘The narrowest house in the world – an event on a global scale’. Historical re-enactment on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Aktion ReinhardtThe article provides a multifaceted analysis of the Keret House as an artistic installation and a cultural event. The construction is placed in the analytical context of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, Le Corbusier’s machine for living, Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Pojazd dla bezdomnych (Vehicle for the Homeless), Big Brother and XTube. Other interpretative contexts are: the history of the Warsaw ghetto, the Aktion Reinhardt as well as the ensemble of issues connected with the third phase of the Holocaust (i.e. “the margins of the Holocaust”): the history of Jewish hideouts, the hunt for the Jews (Judenjagd), the plunder of Jewish mobile and immobile property, the Polish part of the biography of Etgar Keret’s parents. From such a perspective, the Keret House takes the form of a macabre historical re-enactment. The analytical framework comprises Erving Goffman’s stigma theory as well as the history of the attitude of the Polish majority towards the Jewish minority. With increasing frequency, anti-Semitic symbolic violence assumes the form of philosemitic symbolic violence. The poetics of gift and the category of “a Jewish writer with a sense of humour” function as an instrument of blackmail that place the individual subjected to it in a situation with no way-out. In Polish majority culture, the image of Jews as guests, which corresponds to the representation of Poland as home and Poles as hospitable hosts, heirs of the myth of King Casimir the Great, plays the same role. The Keret House proves to be a machine for the reproduction of the Polish majority narrative about the majority attitude of Poles towards Jews, also during the Holocaust. What is at stake within this narrative is the image of Poland and the Poles.[The project was prepared with a financial support of the National Science Centre; decision no DEC-2011/03/B/HS2/05594] Latający Cyrk im. Kazimierza Wielkiego przedstawia: „Najwęższy dom świata – wydarzenie na skalę globu”. Rekonstrukcja historyczna w 70. rocznicę Akcji ReinhardtArtykuł zawiera wieloaspektową analizę Keret House jako instalacji artystycznej i wydarzenia kulturalnego. Obiekt sytuowany jest w kontekście idei panoptikonu Jeremy’ego Benthama, maszyny do mieszkania Le Corbusiera, Pojazdu dla bezdomnych Krzysztofa Wodiczki, Big Brothera czy XTube. Kolejne konteksty interpretacyjne to historia warszawskiego getta, Akcja Reinhardt i zespół problemów związanych z trzecią fazą Zagłady (the margins of the Holocaust): historia żydowskich kryjówek, polowanie na Żydów (Judenjagd), rabunek żydowskich ruchomości i nieruchomości, polska biografia rodziców Etgara Kereta. W tej perspektywie Keret House przybiera postać makabrycznej rekonstrukcji historycznej. Ramy analizy wyznacza teoria piętna Ervinga Goffmana oraz historia stosunku polskiej większości do żydowskiej mniejszości. Antysemicka przemoc symboliczna coraz częściej przybiera postać symbolicznej przemocy filosemickiej. Poetyka daru i kategoria „żydowskiego pisarza z poczuciem humoru” pełnią funkcję narzędzia szantażu, stawiając poddaną mu jednostkę w sytuacji bez wyjścia. Taką samą rolę odgrywa dominujące w polskiej kulturze większościowej wyobrażenie Żydów jako gości, któremu odpowiada obraz Polski jako domu i Polaków jako gościnnych gospodarzy, spadkobierców mitu króla Kazimierza Wielkiego. Keret House okazuje się maszyną do reprodukcji większościowej polskiej opowieści o stosunku Polaków do Żydów, także w okresie Zagłady. Stawką tej opowieści jest wizerunek Polski i Polaków.[Projekt został sfinansowany ze środków Narodowego Centrum Nauki przyznanych na podstawie decyzji numer DEC-2011/03/B/HS2/05594]

On 7 February 2022, Professor Yi Lijun passed away in Beijing. She was the most outstanding Chinese Polish scholar, and was known as the ambassador of Polish literature in China. She was closely linked with the University of Gdańsk. In 2007, she received an honorary doctorate from the University, and she was a member of the Academic Council of the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Gdańskand of the scholarly bi-annual journal Gdańsk East Asian Studies. Yi Lijun was born on 4 December 1934 in the Huang Gang administrative district of Hu Bei Province. She studied in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Wuhan University, and studied Polish at the University of Warsaw from 1954 to 1960. After returning to China, Yi Lijun worked for two years as a journalist for Radio Beijing. In 1962, she started work at Beijing Foreign Studies University, where she remained to the end of her academic career. For many years, she was director of the Department of Polish Language in the Faculty of European Languages of BFSU. She taught several generations of Chinese Polish scholars, who today work at universities, in foreign trade, in culture, in the tourist industry, and in diplomacy. She contributed hugely to the cause of Polish culture in China as a translator, scholar, and promoter of Polish literature. She translated into Chinese the writings of over forty Polish authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her list of publications includes more than seventy works in prose and verse, including: Adam Mickiewicz’s Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve), parts III and IV; Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Krzyżacy (The Knights of the Cross), Ogniem i mieczem (With Fire and Sword ), and Potop (The Deluge); Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke; Olga Tokarczuk’s Prawiek i inne czasy (Primeval and Other Times) and Dom dzienny, dom nocny (House of Day, House of Night); and Wybór klechd i baśni polskich. She also brought to Chinese readers poems by Polish winners of the Nobel Prize, Czesław Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska, and also those of many other poets. Her publications include scores of articles on Polish writers. She edited more than 300 entries on Polish writers and Polish literature for Chinese encyclopedias. Professor Yi Lijun received many Polish state awards in recognition of her achievements, including the Medal for Services to Polish Culture – Gloria Artis, the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, and the Medal of the Commission for National Education.

ABSTRACT The issue is around Janusz Korzcak`s life history, and his dedication to street children in Warsaw, where he developed a pedagogical practice of renewing family affections – a philosophy of love – among street children, mainly those without family and homeless. For this research, we visited the old orphanages Dom Sierot and Nasz Dom, which was followed by a bibliographic review. The main topic deals with the philosophical practice started with Rousseau’s writings and widespread among educators in the late nineteenth century – when they began to make strong criticism against traditional teaching methods, as well as when new practices began to be developed by writers who sought valuing the child as the main focus in education.