Following his election, Ambassador Szczerski stressed Poland’s rich tradition regarding the protection of children’s rights, officials told reporters.
Szczerski said: “As Vice-President of the Bureau, I will be guided in my activities by the legacy of the outstanding Polish pedagogue, Janusz Korczak. He was the first to plead for the necessity to respect children as fully-fledged human beings.”
Poland’s envoy to the UN added: “We shall be promoting his ideas which found their manifestation in the 1989 Convention on Children’s Rights. This document, drafted with Poland’s tangible contribution, sets international standards in protecting children’s rights.”
Korczak was a Polish-Jewish doctor, educator, and writer. He ran a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw. During the Holocaust, he refused offers of a shelter and accompanied Jewish children on their way to the gas chambers of the Nazi German extermination camp of Treblinka.
(mk/pm)