Translated by Marcel Weyland

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I saw Janusz Korczak today,

with the children, their final procession,

and the children were tidy and gay,

as if on a Sunday excursion.

 

They wore their best holiday aprons,

which today they don’t have to keep clean,

five-by-five marched the orphanage in order

- through a jungle of rounded-up men.

 

The town showed a terrified face,

A town strangely bare and in tatters

empty windows stared into the street

like lifeless eye sockets.

 

A cry came, a stray lost bird’s cry,

the knell for a death without sense,

casually reclined in their rickshaws

the lords of the circumstance.

 

A stomping, a shuffling, a silence,

quick words hung lost in the air,

while the church in Leszno Street nearby

stood terrified, silent in prayer.

 

Five-by-five walked the children in order,

no one’s hand pulled a child from the ranks.

These are orphans – so none pushed a fiver

in a navy-blue friend’s fist in thanks.

 

And none intervened in the process,

none stopped Szmerling to have a quick word,

none collected the family’s watches

as gifts for a soldier or guard.

 

Janusz Korczak walked proudly before them

head bare, in his eyes no alarm,

one child holding on tight to his pocket,

two small ones he held in his arms.

 

Someone rushed up – a note in his hand –

explaining, and nervously squeaking:

- You, sir, may go back! A message from Brandt –

Korczak shook his head without speaking.

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