Is it fantasy? Some of it is. But there was an orphanage in Warsaw, Poland, and there was a pediatrician, Doctor Janusz Korczak, who had managed it with wisdom and kindness. And maybe there was in the orphanage a boy like Kajtek, a boy who believed he has secret, magical powers.
"The Wizard of Warsaw" is a classic tale of good and evil, of kindness and cruelty, of the innocent threatened by the sinister. Will Kajtek's magic save the orphanage and the children?
This YA graphic novel honours the true story of Doctor Korczak, a leader in children's rights, who ultimately chose to die together with his orphans. Facts and fiction combine here in a magical realism to give us a glimpse into one of the darkest times in history.
The Wizard of Warsaw is a fictional story that tries to capture the spirit of the events that took place in the orphanage for Jewish children headed by the famous "Old Doctor", Janusz Korczak, who in 1942, together with other caretakers, refused to abandon his children and boarded the train that took them to the death camp. The story is a patchwork of recollections found in memoirs of the surviving former residents of the orphanage and Korczak's own writings. It attempts to show the functioning of the
Republic of Children, Korczak's project grounded in the utmost respect for a child as an individual.