"I do not want to save myself, but my idea"

Irčne Cohen-Janca has written the story of the Polish doctor Janusz Korczak and his nearly 200 orphaned children in a way that is very child-friendly and at the same time poetic for our time, and Maurizio A. C. Quarello has illustrated it with extraordinarily moving images. On a large fold-out page, the artist has drawn the departure of the children – an unforgettable picture.

In August 1942, Janusz Korczak was taken by the SS with his orphans for deportation to the extermination camp Treblinka. The pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman describes this situation in his memoirs (filmed by Roman Polanski under the title The Pianist) as follows: "One day [...] I happened to witness the departure of Janusz Korczak and his orphans [...]. They were going to the countryside, a reason for joy, he explained to the children. [...] Surely, even in the gas chamber [...] he whispered with his last effort: Nothing, this is nothing, children, to spare his little charges the horror of the transition from life to death."