1. Janusz Korczak - In 2005, I had the honor to go on the March of the Living. One of the sites that made a particularly deep impression on me was Korczak House - an orphanage on Siena Street in Warsaw. In 1942, the Nazis emptied the orphanage and all of the children died in Treblinka - accompanied by Dr. Korczak (an internationally famous author and pediatrician), who refused numerous opportunities to save himself.
The Korczak story is related in The Pianist, upon which the movie of the same name was based. Who can read this excerpt and not be moved?
"One day, around 5th August when I had take a brief rest from work and was walking down Gesia Street, I happened to see Janusz Korczak and his orphans leaving the ghetto. The evacuation of the Jewish orphanage run by Janusz Korczak had been ordered for that morning. The children were to have been taken away alone. He had the chance to save himself, and it was only with difficulty that he persuaded the Germans to take him too. He had spent long years of his life with children and now, on this last journey he could not leave them alone. He wanted to ease things for them. He told the orphans they were going out in to the country, so they ought to be cheerful. At last they would be able exchange the horrible suffocating city walls for meadows of flowers, streams where they could bathe, woods full of berries and mushrooms. He told them to wear their best clothes, and so they came out into the yard, two by two nicely dressed and in a happy mood. The little column was lead by an SS man who loved children, as Germans do, even those he was about to see on their way into the next world. He took a special liking to a boy of twelve, a violinist who had his instrument under his arm. The SS man told him to go to the head of the procession of children and play – and so they set off. When I met them in Gesia Street the smiling children were singing in chorus, the little violinist was playing for them and Korczak was carrying two of the smallest infants, who were beaming too, and telling them some amusing story. I am sure that even in the gas chamber, as the Zyklon B gas was stifling childish throats and striking terror instead of hope into the orphans hearts, the Old Doctor must have whispered with one last effort, ‘it's all right, children, it will be all right’. So that at least he could spare his little charges the fear of passing from life to death."
A new play about Korczak and the orphans is being staged in Ottawa - The Children's Republic: In a land of hate, a tiny realm of hope - The Globe and Mail
2. More About Warsaw - On the same trip, I also visited the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw - the so-called Gensha Cemetery. I was amazed that the Nazis had not simply obliterated this huge cemetery (some 200,000 graves, as well as a memorial to Janusz Korczak) that stands as a testament to Jewish life in Warsaw prior to the Shoah. The Cemetery was in poor shape, but now a group of dedicated youngsters is striving to document the history of the Cemetery before it becomes lost to the ravages of time.
4. Enough Already - Pajamas Media » This Again? A Norwegian University Threatens a Boycott of Israel. Here's an update - not sure that it makes me so happy.
6. Fort Hood Fallout - Sometimes an Extremist Really Is an Extremist by Jonah Goldberg on National Review Online, Why Fort Hood Really Happened and You Can't Ignore The Role of Radical Islam.
8. Palestinians and Peace - Sleep Recitation and Palestinian rivals move closer to deal - The Globe and Mail.
9. Speaking of J Street - I have tended to be rather critical of J Street in my postings. Here is a differing view from Dov Waxman, an associate professor in political science at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
10. Hey, I'm a Celtics Fan - but this is just sad...........
