Korczak’s Children

Press Quotes

“KORCZAK’S CHILDREN draws its drama from the reality of the Warsaw Ghetto — honest, relentless and heartbreaking.” —Will Sonzski, Boston College Biweekly

“Within every great tragedy there are small tragedies. And because they are simpler to grasp, the numbers more manageable, small tragedies wring our souls more painfully than the large. KORCZAK’S CHILDREN is a wrenching story dramatically told.” —James Brady, Advertising Age

“KORCZAK’S CHILDREN focuses on Korczak’s efforts to save his orphanage and provide for its children, but Brady broadens the action to include a fuller discussion of the historical and cultural context in which Korczak lived and worked. The play begins with the orphanage children performing a little play about Poland’s King Casimir, who, despite counsel to the contrary, is determined to protect Poland’s Jewish population. Outside in the Warsaw street, a Polish mob is threatening them all with violence; inside, the children are starving. There is both charm and irony in this little playlet for, in 1942, there was no one to protect the Jews, and their condition was truly desperate. For the rest of the play, Korczak, with little success and diminishing hope, will attempt to extract from potential benefactors some assistance for the children in his care … It is Brady’s intention to present a tragic Korczak, founder of his own ‘Children’s Republic,’ doomed to death by his Nazi antagonists. He attempts no ‘message’ for us, but instead offers a perspective on the Holocaust that, because of its particular positive imagery, conveys a sense of renewal and possibility. This is especially true because the burden of the loss falls on the small shoulders of the children, all of whom perished, but whose lives are preserved in the continual retelling of Korczak’s story.” —Robb Erskine, Literature of the Holocaust

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