Recently I came across Plant A Flower Day. While thinking of flowers my thoughts went to orphans. I began thinking about orphans, their parents, and those who take care of them.

What kind of parents are these who leave their child on the steps of an orphanage and that too an infant. The infant who needs mothers love is dropped on the steps, in the hope that the infant will cry, someone will listen and come and pick up the infant. What can be a more brutal act than this? Mother is compared to God. Who do I compare such mothers with? I have had close interactions with an orphanage in India. When I began asking for the list of food items that they need for the infants, I was given a list of food that the infant should rightfully get from mother. Nature never imagined that the infant will be thrown away, so nature never provided for defenses that are needed, if mothers milk is not provided. Why the mother should deprive an infant of this? How will the mother live after throwing away her child. Sometimes I think that unless the mother is absolute evil, she will go crazy searching for her child. The guilt would kill her. How can she eat when she does not know if her child has had food? How will she laugh, when she is unsure if her child is not crying? How will she ever know if her child is alive or dead?

Such parents should be given such a punishment that others dare not repeat such acts. Small children are softer than flowers. They need all the love and protection of their mothers lap and not the cold hard surface of the orphanage steps. One must salute the people who care for these children in such homes. Feeding them, cleaning them, changing clothes, giving medicines and keeping them happy. One day the child will ask- where are my parents. Who will give the answer and what tremendous pain will the person who is asked this question undergo?

After the devastating China earthquake at May 12, thousands children were turned to orphans overnight. Their fate became the hot topic of numerous articles, discussions and forums. Tens of thousands of families, inside and outside China, extended their hands and offered to provide these young victims a safe harbor to grow up. Many news agencies have opened up hot line for adoption. For example, as of today, just in Sina.com, a popular Internet portal, there are 91,547 applications from China and 304 from abroad.

In another popular portal, Netease.com, 128,643 netizens expressed their inclination to take one home. China Life, the largest insurance company in China, even announced that they would cover all the living expenses of these kids before they turn to 18. Well, there are about “only” 4000 (which I wish to be 0) earthquake orphans according to the local government of Sichuan, where the earthquake stroke. Given the large number of the willing families and the sensitivity of the case, it can be expected that there will be a strict process of selection.

Meanwhile, although there is a strong demand of adopting the earthquake orphans, it will be too early to see it happen anytime soon. First, the relief work is still underway after just one month of the earthquake with nearly twenty thousands people are still missing. Many children are still considered “temporary” orphans since their parents are still considered missing. Second, the identify of every child needs to be verified. It is difficult since many kids are still too young to give complete information. Third, the children have to undergo physical and psychological recovery first to help them heal the injury and trauma brought by the earthquake and its consequences. If not treated properly, the shadow may accompany them a long time even after they are adopted and seemingly behave normally.

Compare to the aftermath of Tangshan earthquake at 1976, which recorded a death toll of more than 240 thousands, there were about equal number of earthquake orphans under 16 left. About three quarters are adopted by relatives or caring families, and the others were sent to orphanages or similar organizations. With better living condition, stronger government and social support, and the effect of one child policy, it is not surprise to expect that all Sichuan earthquake orphans will find a loving family and be cared and educated well. For the mental health, a good news we can bank on is that the majority of the Tangshan earthquake orphans are doing well today.

“The Germans began loading the train…There was still room for more inside. Urged on by whips, more and more were packed in. Suddenly the brute in charge ordered the children to be brought forward. Korczak was at the head. I’ll never forget that sight until the end of my life. The heads held high, a silent protest against the murderers. All the Jewish police saluted them and snapped to attention.

“Korczak stood at his full height as he stepped into the boxcar. Carefully he helped the others climb in…They waited with dignity for the doors to be closed and sealed, then for the train to start up. The last recorded sight of him, then as in his whole life, was of a solitary man comforting the children.”

These were the words of a member of Warsaw’s Jewish police in 1942–forced by the Nazis to facilitate the loading of Jews destined for death. This cattle car contained ghetto youngsters from the orphanage founded 29 years previously by author, educator and pediatrician Janusz Korczak [Yanush Kor-Jacques].

Although he was offered a chance for survival, Korczak, in order to ease the anxiety of his charges, chose to accompany them to certain death. Initially a pen name of Henryk Goldszmit’s, he assumed this name and died with it.

Mark Bernheim’s book about Korczak, “Father of the Orphans,” discussed the book with this reporter. He told of the difficulties encountered in his research. Although the pedagogical and humanitarian sides of Korczak are well known in Poland and Israel, American research facilities contained little information about this obscure hero.

While researching the book, Bernheim received many anecdotes and pictures from people who had been residents of Korczak’s orphanage before the Nazis invaded Poland.

“I don’t make it too horrible or too gruesome,” he said, because the book is aimed at younger readers.

After a brief introduction to Korczak and the children, Bernheim flashes back to Korczak’s birth in 1878. The Goldszmit’s were well-to-do non-religious Jews, successfully assimilated into the Polish mainstream–or so they thought. From that point, events progress in a linear fashion.

Henryk’s father, an attorney, encountered anti-Semitism and became mentally ill. He started to hallucinate while recuperating at home.

Dramatizing the scene, Bernheim describes what happened as Henryk’s father, lying in bed, asks his 11-year-old son to come enter the bedroom.

Murmuring, he told the boy, “Listen to me carefully. I may be sick now, but I can see some things I wouldn’t admit for a long time. I must warn you. Be on your guard always. Life is war and you never know when the real battle is going to start. Many people want to hurt us. Sometimes they only laugh and if you laugh back, they’ll go away. But there are much worse ones. They are really dangerous. They aren’t content with making fun, no–they want to hurt…

“They are evil. They only want to hurt those who do good. And this is the worst: They rule the world. They make the laws for their good, not ours…They’ve beaten me Henryk. I can’t fight them any more.”

Soon thereafter, his father was committed to a mental institution where he died. Because of the costs of treating his father, family possessions were sold, servants let go and the family became impoverished.

“Part of that comes from (Korczak’s) diaries,” Bernheim said. “Part of it comes from me…because so much about (his life as a child) was destroyed in the war…When I actually sat down to write the book and I needed more details about it–you invent…

“It’s a historical biography,” he said. “You do as much research as you possibly can and…then you research the period.”

In his grief over the ensuing years, Henryk secretly wrote poems, a novel and a play. After entering medical school under a miniscule quota for Jews, he submitted his play to a literary competition. Under the Polish-sounding pseudonym of Janusz Korczak, he was awarded an honorable mention.

After receiving his medical degree, he continued a dual career as pediatrician Henryk Goldszmit, an assimilated Jew who ran two children’s orphanages, and famous Polish writer-radio personality Janusz Korczak.

During the 1930s Korczak made two trips to Palestine. Just before the Nazis invaded in 1939, he decided the children and orphanage should relocate to Jerusalem–however, by then it was too late.

“He was going to divide his time,” Bernheim said. “He was an idealist…a lot of Jews thought they could work with the Germans.”

“Father of the Orphans” takes the reader to that infamous 1942 march from the Warsaw Ghetto orphanage to the railroad yard–a point at which Bernheim became stumped.

“How am I going to write that last chapter?” he recalled. “How am I going to describe cramming them into the gas chamber? How am I going to do this?”

Bernheim decided his description would be “very spare and very factual and very unemotional…What could I say? That everything was OK; that they were in heaven with their parents?