A Light in the Darkness: Janusz Korczak, His Orphans, and the Holocaust

Janusz Korczak, a Polish-Jewish pediatrician and writer, established a home for orphans in 1912 and cared for Jewish children throughout both world wars. Much more than a biography, Marrin’s introduction to this heroic figure offers an exhaustive study of WWII in Poland and Germany. In straightforward, descriptive language, Marrin (Uprooted: The Japanese American Experience During World War II) explores a vast array of subjects linked to the war, including the history of Palestine and of Judaism in Poland, and he devotes a significant number of pages to a biographical portrait of Adolf Hitler and the growth of Nazism. The narrative, accompanied by black-and-white photos, conveys the horrors of wartime with gruesome details, such as Nazis throwing infants into the air for target practice, and includes tangential subjects, such as sterilization laws in America. Korczak is depicted as a passionate humanitarian with an extraordinary respect and love for children, and as one whose activism was the seed of the human rights movement—in particular, the rights of children. He is often absent from the book, though, as Marrin discusses, in great detail, other topics connected to WWII. Still, there is much to learn and contemplate in this dense yet accessible examination. Ages 12–up. (Sept.)■