In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we present “Dr. Korczak and the Orphan Child”

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Burkett CPAs is exhibiting “Dr. Korczak and the Orphan Child” from the Beloved: Children of the Holocaust collection during the week of January 28. You are invited to stop by our office to view the portrait and read Dr. Korczak’s remarkable story.

“Dr. Korczak and the Orphan Child” is one of 28 portraits in the Beloved: Children of the Holocaust collection by South Carolina artist, Mary Burkett. The collection has been recognized by the Congress of the United States and described by Israeli Ambassador, Ron Dermer, as “a light shining in the darkness”. The entire Beloved: Children of the Holocaust collection may be viewed at www.maryburkettart.com.

Dr. Janus Korczak was a highly respected pediatrician and children’s author in Warsaw, Poland before WWII. He gave up a lucrative career to open an orphanage, where he raised and cared for 200 Jewish children. When the Nazis took over Poland, he was forced to move the orphanage into the Jewish Ghetto. He struggled against impossible odds to continue to feed and care for his children until August of 1942. In his Ghetto Diary, he prayed in desperation , “Our Father who art in heaven…daily bread…bread.” On August 7, 1942, the Nazis came for the children. Rejecting the opportunity to escape the Ghetto, Dr. Korczak led his children down the streets of Warsaw, holding hands, two-by-two, singing. They were loaded onto trains and taken to Treblinka Concentration Camp, where they were all killed. Dr. Korczak wrote, “I exist not to be loved and admired, but to love and act. It is not the duty of those around me to love me. Rather, it is my duty to be concerned about the world, about man.”