Touched by the Spirit of Janusz Korczak: Liba Engel

How I “met” Janusz Korczak

Liba Engel, PhD
It is hard to imagine that I “met” Janusz Korczak for the first time almost 30 years ago.  Prior to the first meeting of the Greater Lafayette (IN) Holocaust Remembrance Conference committee meeting, I noticed a poster of a man with piercing blue eyes; the poster hung outside my father’s Rabbi Gedalyah Engel’s office, B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation.  I was curious to know who the person was.  My father and I did not have a change to have an exchange prior to the commencement of our meeting; instead he asked me to ask another member of the committee.  I later learned the story of Janusz Korczak and decided if I ever needed to write a dissertation on such a selfless and amazing person, it would be Janusz Korczak.
Fast forward to Teachers College Columbia University. I am a graduate student in the Department of Curriculum & Teaching.  While in the library at Columbia University, in the days of card catalogues, I stumbled across Korczak and decided I would read some of his pedagogy.  As I did, tears rolled down my cheeks  – I finally found a pedagogist who felt the same way I did about children.
Fast forward to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  I am furthering my education in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching.  I needed to find a topic for my dissertation.  It was an easy task for me; I knew it would have something to do with Korczak.  And indeed my dissertation, The Pedagogy of Janusz Korczak in the Hadera Democratic School:  Twentieth Century Reform in Modern Israel, evolved.  I passed my defense; I was a doctor of philosophy.
Since my return to the United States of America I have continued to write about Janusz Korczak. In addition, I sit on the Board of Directors of Shining Mountain CPC, a center dedicated to Korczak’s pedagogy.

Photograph of Janusz Korczak, 1933,reprinted courtesy of Beit Lohana Haghetaov, Ghetto Fighter’s House, Israel,and Janusz Korczak Workshop Archives, Warsaw.