Korczak in Cleveland

Trees, a meadow, a breeze rustling the branches of the trees, birds singing. Children emerge from the trees and walk down a path. Again a meadow. Quiet. After a moment it becomes clear there are children hiding in the grass. They pop up out of the meadow one after the other and join the others.

I remember, as a kid, at the right time of year, climbing a big cherry tree and, each of us on our „own” branch, picking all the fruit. We sat there, unseen by others, until we had gathered all the fruit within our reach. That was the end of our game, we all went our separate ways. But then there was another tree, with other fruit. The only tree we didn’t touch was a plum tree, it was too small and the fruit was too sour. And when the swallow died in the well, we held a funeral.

Samantha Baskind is a professor of art history at Cleveland State University. I like to show visitors Warsaw. I took her to see the Korczak monument. Józef Lorski and I showed her what remains of the Warsaw Ghetto. Samantha is the author of a book on the memory of the Warsaw Ghetto in American art and culture. Her visit to the Korczak monument was very personal and emotional.

Patrycja Dołowy, a Polish photographer and multimedia artist, buries „treasures” in different places throughout the city. She calls them „views”. I buried „treasures” as a child. Today, when I stand outside the home of my childhood, I know where they’re buried. This is memory. Patrycja wants her city to remember, too. Not through monuments, but in private, personal „views”. Patrycja is an artist, Samantha is an art history professor.

A plum tree grew in the Warsaw Ghetto, a mirabelle plum, or mirabelka. When it was the end of the world and everything was destroyed, it remained. It remembered. It was memory. And someone without memory came and destroyed it. And then suddenly, like children in a meadow, there appeared people all over the world who remembered that somewhere they had kept seeds of the mirabelka, and the tree was reborn. Patrycja planted the mirabelka where it used to be in the Ghetto. This time the world saw her “view”.

Sean Martin wrote a book about Jewish children in prewar Poland. About orphans, about Korczak’s children. He wrote about Mały Przegląd (Little Review), a newspaper created by children at the inspiration of Korczak. The Old Doctor, as he was known, promoted the autonomy of the child. He fought for the rights of children, which today are enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

So when Sean heard that the Cleveland Clinic was hosting an exhibit of the work of the artist Sharon Lockhart, all about Mały Przegląd, he had to go. On the wall was a large image of a girl from Rudzienko poring over an issue of Mały Przegląd. The girl is sitting on one of the benches in Warsaw’s National Library, benches that were reproduced as part of the exhibit and on display at the Cleveland Clinic. The city, the hospital, the sick and distressed, and here…memory. The memory of Korczak’s children. This time in Cleveland, not in Warsaw. The same Cleveland where Samantha lives.

FRONT, an international, multimedia art exhibit in Cleveland. Ohio, summer 2018. Post-industrial Ohio City. And a showing of Sharon Lockhart’s film, a part of her exhibit from workshops at the Youth Center for Sociotherapy in Rudzienko, Otwock district. Throughout the workshops the children uncover their own potential and learn to take advantage of their own autonomy. They discover their own bodies in movement and find themselves as part of the landscape; they are the visions, or views, described in the many issues of Mały Przegląd. The last issue appeared on September 1, 1939. The children of Rudzienko wrote their own issues of Mały Przegląd, preserving the original character of the newspaper.

I saw the film from Rudzienko. This is actually a film about trees and meadows. About children who appear and disappear. Who were and who will be. They will bury their “treasures”, climb trees, wander the city, walk the halls of a hospital, read newspapers, and speak with their own children. In Cleveland and in Warsaw. And the memory of the mirabelka and of Korczak will make them smile, and “when a child smiles, the whole world smiles.” (J. Korczak).
*More information about Sharon Lockhart’s Little Review can be found in the article Giving Voice and Power to Young Women by Jakub Gawkowski, http://politicalcritique.org/cee/poland/2017/little-review-giving-voice-and-power-to-young-women/.