A field of buttercups

by Joseph Hyams

This story comprises one of the smaller statistics that passed irretrievably through the gates of Treblinka. It's the story of Janusz Korczak, renowned Polish writer and educator, who had devoted his later years to directing the "Our Home" orphanage relocated first to the Warsaw ghetto. It was a pathetic situation hardly underplayed by Mr. Hyams who writes as if he were privy to Mr. Korczak's most private moments, not to mention those of such as Gestapo Chief Hahn, the "architect of destruction" who planned the ghetto's final "resettlement." The filth, hunger, despair, the warped and sore-ridden children, the bodies in the streets, contrast with black-market profiteering, gambling halls, etc. Then there are characters like child prodigy Abrasha who refuses to speak except through his violin; Nazi officer Erwin, who had once been one of Korczak's orphans; Adam Czerniakow, head of the Jewish Council who refuses to sign the relocation order and subsequently commits suicide; Friedrych who