I find myself being drawn to stories of selflessness in times of cruelty. When studying the Holocaust how can you not? Focusing on numbers, destruction, perpetrators, and hatred doesn’t leave much room for hope in the world.
But then you come across stories and testimonies of goodness–extreme goodness. Janusz Korczak, or Henryk Goldszmit as the former name is a pen name, was the director of an orphanage and an educator. He educated his students, and like many teachers, he cared for his students. When the orphanage was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, he followed. Despite pleas and offers to leave the ghetto, he made an impossible choice to be a leader and a comfort for the children. However noble this choice may be, he was murdered at Treblinka along with the orphans and students when the ghetto was deported in 1942.
Jan and Antonina Żabiński provide another story of selflessness. Risking their lives for complete strangers, they opened up their house in the Warsaw Zoo to hide Jews from the Germans. They helped save 300 people from persecution.
How can we even come close to the selflessness and authenticity these people show? As teachers, we may not be risking lives for our students everyday, but we are still their lifeline. We must be the good for our students to see and model. We must teach tough subjects and continue the legacy of survivors and victims of genocide. Even when the world feels cruel, we must be selfless.