Korczak

the movie will show you the kind of man Korczak was.....

the story is amazing, and true.

I am so glad this movie was made \

a masterpiece!


The Great and Loveable Teacher Korczak   January 26, 2003
Doug Anderson (Miami Beach, Florida United States)
24 out of 24 found this review helpful

Every movie Andrzej Wajda made is unique and memorable and many of them are masterpieces. This film made in 1990 is one of my favorites. If you've seen Polanski's THE PIANIST this is an excellent film to see if you want to learn more about what life was like in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Before war breaks out Korczak has already achieved much notoriety. His voice is heard by millions on his radio show and he is recognized in the street by both Poles and Germans alike as a progressive minded humanitarian. He is also a doctor who runs an orphanage for Jewish children and in the opening scenes we hear him on his radio program as he tells just how much his childen mean to him. As soon as the political climate within Poland changes however the doctors program is cancelled and before long the doctor along with his 200 children are marched toward the Warsaw Ghetto. At first the doctor believes the war will be a short one and he confronts the Germans and shames them for their mistreatment of the Jewish Poles. But as events unfold the doctors optimism becomes dimmer and dimmer. It does not take long for people to start dying in the ghetto of starvation and sickness and the doctor soon comes to realize that is very unlikely that either he or the children will survive the war. Death is everywhere around them and the doctor sees all that he can do is try and make this constant contact with death less fearful and so writes plays for the children in which death is experienced as a peaceful thing. These are hard scenes to watch and as moving as anything you will see on film but there is also a beauty to them as they show just how profoundly the doctor feels the childrens suffering. The doctor believes in not just feeding the childrens and caring for them when they are sick but also he believes in making good people out of them and despite the dire circumstances he never ceases acting with the childrens interests in mind, their interests always come before his own. They all admire him and look to him as a beacon of hope. And the doctor does not fail his children. The last scenes of the children walking proudly hand in hand with their Korczak are moving and uplifting even though we know what fate awaits them. The ending of this film has a lyric beauty that I will not give away but I could not give it away even if I wanted to as it really trancends any description of it--you just have to experience it. We feel what the children feel for their beloved Korczak and in a way we all--the best part of ourselves-- marches with them.

The very highest recommendation.


Gripping true story of the Holocaust   August 9, 2001
Susan F. Russell (Gettysburg, PA United States)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

This film is different from other depictions of the Holocaust in that in focusses on life in the ghetto. At first, the acting seemed overdone. But as I was drawn into the fascinating true story of Janusc Korczak, a physician and beloved national star of a children's radio program who moved to the ghetto with the children in the orphanage he ran, I began to appreciate the acting style of another culture. Korczak, who was given many opportunities to escape, remained with his children even until the bitter end when they are all deported to Treblinka. The ending (I will not spoil it for you, as one of the other reviewers said too)is absolutely brilliant. Korczak's progressive ideas about the education of children, his pleas to raise money for the orphans, his struggle in the ghetto are all brilliantly portrayed. This film, along with "Schindler's List" (and to a slightly lesser extent, "Europa, Europa") was directed, acted and written in such a way that one word comes to mind: genius.