Janusz Korczak: The Child as a Person

Janusz Korczak, the pen name of the Polish-Jewish doctor and writer Henryk Goldszmit, argued that children are full people with their own dignity, not merely future adults. From 1912 he directed an orphanage in Warsaw where children ran their own parliament, newspaper and court, in which even adults could be judged. His books, including How to Love a Child and The Child's Right to Respect, urged adults to listen to children, respect their privacy and take their opinions seriously.

During the Second World War his orphanage was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. In August 1942, when the children were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp, Korczak refused offers to save himself and went with them; none survived. His ideas influenced Poland's 1978 proposal for a binding convention on children's rights, and he is often seen as an inspiration for the principle that children should have a voice in decisions affecting them. In 1959 the UN adopted a ten-principle Declaration of the Rights of the Child.