The King of Children: Why Janusz Korczak Chose to Die in a Gas Chamber

The heartbreaking true story of Janusz Korczak, the doctor who refused to abandon his orphans during the Holocaust and accompanied them to Treblinka.

The Last March

It was August 5, 1942. The heat in Warsaw was suffocating. The air smelled of melting asphalt, unwashed bodies, and the distinct, metallic tang of blood.

On the streets of the Ghetto, chaos reigned. The Nazis were conducting the "Great Action"—clearing out the Jews block by block, shoving them onto cattle trains destined for Treblinka. Screams, gunshots, and the barking of dogs filled the air.

But then, the screaming stopped.

The bystanders, even the Jewish police, froze.

Down the street came a procession unlike anything the Ghetto had ever seen.

It was not a chaotic herd of terrified victims. It was a parade.

At the front walked an old man. He was frail, with a white goatee and eyes that looked like they had seen the end of the world. He was holding the hand of a small boy. On his other side, a small girl held his coat.

Behind them marched 192 children.

Dressed in their best clothes.

Washed. Comb.

Walking in perfect rows of four.

They were not crying. They were not begging. They were carrying a green flag—the flag of King Matt, the fictional hero from the books the old man had written.

The old man was Dr. Janusz Korczak.

He was marching his children to the Umschlagplatz (the collection point). He knew exactly where the trains were going. He knew about the gas. He knew about the ovens.

But he told the children they were going to the countryside. He told them to bring their favorite books and toys.

He lied to them. Not to deceive them, but to protect them from the terror of their final hour.

He walked with his head high, eyes focused forward, creating a bubble of safety around 192 doomed souls.

A witness later wrote: "This was not a march to death. This was a silent protest against the murderers."

This is the story of the man who could have lived, but chose to walk into the fire because he believed that a child should never have to die alone.

Part I: The Man Who Was "The Old Doctor"

Before the world went mad, Janusz Korczak was a celebrity.

Born Henryk Goldszmit, he was a Polish Jew, a pediatrician, a writer, and a radio personality. In 1930s Poland, he was the "Mr. Rogers" of his time, but with the intellect of a philosopher and the grit of a street doctor.

He was known as "The Old Doctor." People loved him. Gentile and Jew alike.

He didn't just treat children; he respected them. This was a radical idea in the early 20th century. At the time, children were seen as property—"future people" who had to be molded into adults.

Korczak said: "Children are not the people of tomorrow, but are people of today."

He believed children had the right to be respected, the right to make mistakes, and the right to their own secrets.

He founded an orphanage in Warsaw—Dom Sierot (The Home of Orphans). It wasn't a bleak institution; it was a Republic.

The children had their own parliament.

They had their own newspaper.

They had their own court of justice. If a teacher was unfair, a child could sue them in the court. Korczak himself was put on trial by the children several times—and he loved it.

He taught them that justice applies to everyone.

But history has a way of crushing beautiful things.

Part II: The Walls Go Up

In 1940, the Nazis sealed the Warsaw Ghetto.

Korczak’s orphanage was forced to move inside the walls. The "Republic of Children" was now a prison.

The conditions were hell on earth. 400,000 people crammed into 1.3 square miles. Rations were 180 calories a day—roughly the equivalent of two slices of bread.

Starvation wasn't an accident; it was the policy.

Korczak, now in his 60s, with a bad heart and failing lungs, became a beggar.

He would leave the orphanage every morning with a sack on his back. He walked the streets of the Ghetto, stepping over dead bodies on the sidewalk, knocking on doors of the few wealthy Jews left, begging for food, coal, or medicine.

He was relentless. He would shout, plead, and threaten.

"You have money while my children are starving!" he would scream at smugglers.

He often returned with a sack of potatoes or a bag of groats. It was never enough, but it bought them one more day.

Inside the orphanage, while the world outside descended into barbarism, Korczak fought to keep civilization alive.

He made the children wash.

He made them study.

He made them put on plays.

In July 1942, just weeks before the end, he had the children perform a play called The Post Office by Rabindranath Tagore.

It is the story of a young boy who is dying, but who imagines the world outside his window is beautiful.

Why that play?

Korczak was preparing them. He was teaching them how to accept death with serenity. He was rehearsing them for the inevitable.

Part III: The Refusal to Save Himself

Here is the part of the story that reveals the true measure of the man.

Korczak was famous. He had friends on the "Aryan" side of Warsaw—Polish writers, doctors, and resistance members. They had the means to get him out.

They sent messengers into the Ghetto. They had forged papers waiting for him. They had a safe house.

"Come with us, Henryk," they said. "You are too important to die here. You can write. You can testify. We can save you."

Korczak looked at them like they were insane.

"And the children?" he asked.

"We can only save you," they said. "There are 200 of them. It is impossible to hide 200 children."

Korczak didn't hesitate. He didn't agonize over the decision. He was actually offended by the offer.

"You do not leave a sick child in the night," he said. "And you do not leave children at a time like this."

He sent his friends away.

This wasn't a momentary burst of bravery. He refused to escape multiple times over two years.

He stayed in the trap voluntarily.

He knew what was coming. He wrote in his diary during those final months. His entries aren't filled with fear; they are filled with exhaustion and a strange, detached curiosity about death.

"I am tired," he wrote. "I am so tired."

But every morning, he got up, put on his doctor's coat, and checked the children for lice.

Part IV: The Arrival of the SS

On the morning of August 5th, the SS soldiers surrounded the orphanage.

“Alle Juden raus!” (All Jews out!)

It was time.

Korczak didn't panic. He didn't let the staff panic. His right hand, Stefa Wilczyńska—a woman whose heroism is often forgotten, but who also refused to leave the children—helped him organize the rows.

They told the children they were going on a field trip. They told them they were going to "the East" where there were trees and bread.

Korczak put on his old military coat. He put on his cap.

He walked out into the courtyard.

The 192 children lined up. They were quiet.

In a Ghetto filled with screaming, crying, and begging, the silence of Korczak’s children was the loudest sound in Warsaw.

Part V: The Train

The march to the Umschlagplatz took hours. It was a sweltering furnace of a day.

As they walked, the Polish police cleared the way. Even the Jewish Ghetto police, who were known for their brutality, lowered their batons. They saluted the Old Doctor.

They reached the train station. The cattle cars were waiting—wooden boxes with barbed wire windows, floors covered in quicklime that would burn the feet of the victims.

As the children were being loaded onto the trains, a German officer (some accounts say it was an SS officer who recognized Korczak’s books from his own childhood) approached him.

"I know you," the officer said. "You wrote 'Little Jack'. I read that book when I was a boy. You can go. Leave the children, and you can go."

It was the final test.

The gates of hell were open, but he had a VIP pass to turn back.

Korczak looked at the man.

He looked at the cattle car where his children—his "family"—were huddled in the dark, scared, needing him.

"You are mistaken," Korczak said. "I cannot go. Not without them."

He turned his back on life.

He climbed up the ramp.

He stepped into the dark train car.

And the doors slid shut.

Part VI: Treblinka

We don't know exactly what happened inside that train car during the four-hour journey to Treblinka.

We know there was no water. We know people suffocated before they even arrived.

But we can guess what Korczak did.

He likely held them. He likely told them stories. He likely whispered that everything would be okay, right up until the air ran out.

When they arrived at Treblinka, there were no selections. There was no work camp. Treblinka was a death factory. You arrived, you stripped, you died.

Korczak, Stefa, and 192 children went into the gas chamber together.

He didn't save their lives.

He couldn't. The machine of genocide was too big for one old doctor to stop.

But he saved their humanity.

He saved them from the terror of dying alone. He saved them from the feeling of abandonment.

He held their hands until the very end.

Part VII: The Legacy of the Good Father

Janusz Korczak is dead. His ashes are mixed with the soil of Treblinka, indistinguishable from the ashes of the children he loved.

But his spirit is the foundation of how we treat children today.

After the war, the world realized that Korczak was right. His writings became the basis for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Every time a law is passed to protect a child from abuse, to guarantee them education, to give them a voice—that is Korczak speaking from the grave.

But his legacy is deeper than laws.

His legacy is the uncomfortable mirror he holds up to all of us.

We live in a world of self-preservation. We are taught to look out for "Number One." We are taught that survival is the ultimate goal.

Korczak taught us that survival is meaningless without dignity.

He showed us that love is not a feeling; it is an action.

Love is staying.

Love is standing in the dark with someone so they don't have to be afraid of the monsters.

Conclusion: The Ultimate Teacher

There is a statue of Janusz Korczak in Warsaw today.

It depicts him weary, slumped over, with his arms wrapped around the children.

He is not looking at the sky in triumph. He is looking at the ground.

It is a statue of defeat.

But it is the most beautiful defeat in human history.

Janusz Korczak didn't win the war. He didn't stop the Holocaust.

But on that hot August day in 1942, he won a victory that the Nazis could never understand.

They had the guns. They had the gas. They had the power to kill.

But they could not break the bond between that old man and those children.

They could kill him, but they could not make him leave.

And in a world that was tearing itself apart, that simple act of staying—of choosing love over life—was the ultimate rebellion.

He walked into the dark so they wouldn't have to see it.

And for that, he is not just a hero.

He is a reminder of what a human being is actually supposed to be.