Korczak

On Thursday night I watched an extraordinary musical at the Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames.  I'd like to share with you the story behind the musical, my impressions of it, and the work of Youth Music Theatre UK.

At 4.48am, 1 September, 72 years ago, the Germans opened fire on Westerplatte in Poland: the opening salvo in what was to become World War 2.  After two incredibly tense days, at 11am today (3 September 1939) Chamberlain took to the wireless with the news that the Government's ultimatum had expired and the British Empire was at war with Germany.  Over 60 million would die.

The Story

Warsaw is a city of tragedies. In 1939 it was an elegant city, the home to a flourishing community of over 350,000 Jews - around 30% of its population.  Warsaw was the jewel in the crown of European Jewry.  At the end of the war fewer than 10 buildings were still standing in the Old and New Towns combined.  85% of the whole Warsaw metropolitan area had been wiped off the map on Hitler's personal orders, whilst the Red Army had remained on the opposite side of the Vistula watching the smoke rise in late 1944.  By 1945, some 90% of Poland's 3 million strong Jewish population had been murdered by the Nazis.  A further 3 million non-Jewish Poles had also died.  Just pause for a moment and think about these numbers: almost 20% of the country's entire population had been killed.  What for us were painful, crushing losses were in fact 0.9% and 0.3% for the UK and the US respectively.

For a single story to stand out in that crushing narrative, it must be extraordinary.  One does: the tale of Janusz Korczak and his 192 orphans.  They were amongst the millions caught up in the terrifying German "Blitzkrieg" onslaught on Poland.  Their story is not too widely told and it deserves to be.

This is where Nick Stimson's work in writing "Korczak" and the YMT in putting on this musical theatre piece come in.

"Old Doctor" Korzack

Janusz Korzack (born Henryk Goldszmit) was a Polish Jewish doctor who was light years ahead of his time in terms of attitudes.  He had studied in Berlin and ran an orphanage in Warsaw in which he encouraged his children to govern themselves and take responsibility.  The kids had their own democratic parliament, court and newspaper.  By all accounts he treated them with great love and enlightenment, which obviously were not at all typical for the era.  He was 61 years old in September 1939 and was known as "Old Doctor" by his charges.

In October 1940 the 30% Jewish population of Warsaw was crammed into 2.4% of its area as the infamous Ghetto was created.  These were people many of whom had relatives and friends in Britain and in America, who nervously waited for news of what was happening to people they knew and loved.  Korzack's orphange was forced to move three times.  I was in Warsaw this summer with my own group of American high school students on a two week holocaust education tour.  I took them everywhere I could related to Korzack including the last location of his orphanage.  It is still a children's home today.  Its physical building somehow survived the annihilation that moved General Eisenhower to say of the Polish capital "“I have seen many towns destroyed, but nowhere have I been faced with such destruction.”

For almost 2 years Korczak did everything he could to feed his children in an environment where people were literally starving to their deaths on the streets of the Ghetto.  On 6 August 1942 Korzack and his children were rounded up at their orphanage.  This was as part of the "clearing" of the ghetto (just 100 or so SS soldiers were involved in the rounding up of almost 300,000 people in the course of two months in late 1942).

Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto

Eyewitness Joshua Perle wrote of the scene:

A miracle occurred. Two hundred children did not cry. Two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep. Not one of them ran away. None tried to hide. Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, to their father and brother, Janusz Korczak, so that he might protect and preserve them. On all sides the children were surrounded by Germans, Ukrainians, and this time also Jewish policemen. They whipped and fired shots at them. The very stones of the street wept at the sight of the procession.

Umschlagplatz Memorial Warsaw

Korzack himself was given the opportunity (by some accounts twice) to escape the Ghetto immediately before the deportation and save his own life.  Instead he took the cattle train from the Warsaw "Umschlagplatz" with his orphans for the 100 km journey out to the (even today) incredibly remote camp known as Treblinka.

Treblinka was a very different camp even to Auschwitz, where there was the possibility of selection and survival for some time, at least for fit adult "prisoners".  It was a pure death camp: a killing factory.  Some Jews were kept back to the do the work of processing new arrivals: they themselves would then be killed a few weeks or months later.  The boast was that within 2 hours of arrival all new arrivals would be murdered.  Unlike the vast majority of other concentration camps it did not require an electric fence: it was designed to massacre people, not to house them.  It is tiny: the size of a couple of soccer fields in total.

Images from Treblinka this July

We do not know how many people were killed in Treblinka.  The standard estimate is a minimum of 800,000; if the figures of a villager who kept meticulous records of the numbers of train arrivals are believed - and accurately extrapolated - it could be as high as 1,200,000.  This is greater even than Auschwitz.  After an armed uprising in 1943, the camp was closed.  600 Jews had escaped: just 40 survived the War.  This is a major reason the place is not in our consciousness: hardly anyone survived. 40 out of 800,000 is a 0.005% survival rate.  99.995% died.

At the camp there are jagged stones of different sizes to represent the murdered communities of Poland (middle picture, above).  The names of the towns and villages appear on the stones.  Just one person is honoured with an individual mention.  His name is Janusz Korzack.

The Musical

This seems a highly difficult subject matter to put to the medium of a musical theatre.  I was quite apprehensive.  I attended with Eva Schloss, an 82 year old whose mother had married Otto Frank after the War.  As a Jewish refugee from Austria, she had lived opposite Anne Frank as a child in Amsterdam, and now travels the world devoting herself to Holocaust education.  She is genuinely an amazing, warm, funny, lovely soul.

At the drinks reception we attended beforehand an elderly Jewish man approached Eva and asked in a thick Central European accent "Were you Kindertransport?"... "No" she answered in her lovely Viennese sing-song accent.. "I was in Auschwitz."  At this point all I could do is just look on and apply some perspective in my life. 

Eva and I in Amsterdam this summer

The musical was performed by Youth Music Theatre UK.  The cast of 40 (with the exception of Korczak played by West End professional Peter Straker) were all aged 11 to 21 years old.  They had come from all over the UK and had worked 12 hour days for 2 weeks before hand.  The orchestra was also of the same age.

I can't describe their performance as anything other than breathtakingly good.  The energy, the quality of the singing and the music, the total complete passion that these kids put in was extraordinary.  The narrative of the actual story lost me somewhat, as did the sub-plots (such as a rather sweet love triangle) but it mattered not one bit.  The professionalism of the cast, the quality of the production and the stamina of these kids to sing and play for 2.5 hours were astounding.  The scenes were not as upsetting as might be imagined: the enduring image I have was of Korczak telling the children the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and that they would be entering a wonderful place: the Crystal Mountain.  They do not die at the end so much as burst into a celebration of hope, life and peace.

After the show Eva and I were able to go backstage to meet the cast.  She spoke to them of how she had been 15 herself when she was deported to Auschwitz and was lucky to have survived the intitial selection.  She had lost her father and brother in the camps.  She told them how important it was to her that they had been part of getting the story of Korczak out there, and that she hoped they would remember being part of this throughout their lives.  Several of them were in floods of tears listening to her.  She asked me to address them about my work with kids over the years visiting the camps and specifically my latest trip with students to Treblinka and Warsaw.  I wasn't expecting to do this and somewhat stumbled through it, but hey.

It is endlessly difficult to envisage the victims of the holocaust as individuals.  There is no holocaust: there are in fact six million different individual holocausts.  Seeing these children singing and acting at the Rose Theatre had such an effect on me.  It somehow made me realise far more properly that the 192 orphans were actual young people, like these kids we met: living beings with hopes, fears, aspirations.  The vulnerability of the young and the role of adults in protecting and inspiring them came through so strongly.  The performance is billed as the "The triumph of hope over death, ... music theatre at its best".  How to explain: it was just exactly that.

The performers have been brought together by a remarkable organisation.  YMT is the UK's leading national music theatre company for young people.  They work with hundreds of young people each year, and if this production is anything to go by, they do a sterling job of it.  I really do hope they will be able to put this piece on again in time.  The current show ends tonight, 3 September.  If you are free tonight and can get to Kingston, ring the box office and just go.  I so strongly recommend it.  If not, watch their other work.  I shall be.

Korczak Memorial, Warsaw

Janusz Korczak wrote: "What should we do when everyone acts less than human? We must act more than human."

Youth Music Theatre UK are on Twitter: @ymtuk