"Father of Children's rights" honoured in UK show

LONDON, Dec 7 (Reuters) The children huddle together, their eyes hollow with fear and hunger as they await deportation to the gas chambers of Treblinka.

Their hands reach up, clamouring for comfort from the kindly doctor. He will not desert them. They will die together.

The haunting painting of Dr Janusz Korczak surrounded by doomed orphans from the Warsaw Ghetto bears poignant witness to his ultimate sacrifice at a new exhibition which opened at London's Jewish Museum yesterday.

The Polish doctor, writer and educator was a fervent advocate of children's rights whose credo was posthumously adopted by the United Nations in its Convention of the Rights of the Child in 1989.

UNESCO declared 1979 ''The Year of Janus Korczak'' to coincide with the International Year of the Child and the centenary of his birth. He died in Treblinka along with the orphans in 1942.

The haunting deportation canvas in the exhibition is by Israeli artist Yitzhak Belfer, who was born in Poland in 1923 and was raised in Korczak's Warsaw orphanage.

Psychotherapist Sandra Joseph, reflecting on Korczak's legacy after interviewing orphans he brought up, said: ''They all described his warmth, love and care.'' SHELTERED CHILDHOOD She felt the exhibition helped to redress the balance as ''In the western world he has been lost in history. He is not known outside Eastern Europe.'' The exhibition chronicles the life of Korczak, product of a sheltered childhood whose security was shattered when his father was sent to an asylum.

A renowned doctor specialising in paediatrics, he set up two orphanages for Catholic and Jewish children.

He hosted a children's radio programme, founded a newspaper run by and for children, defended street kids in juvenile courts and won literary fame with his classic children's story ''King Matt The First'' that has been translated into 20 languages.

After the Nazis occupied Poland, his Jewish orphanage was moved into the Warsaw Ghetto.

Refusing all offers for his own rescue, he accompanied the 200 children on the train that took them to Treblinka.

As one eyewitness recalled: ''I will never forget that sight to the end of my life .... The children went four by four.

Korczak went first with his head held high leading a child with each hand.

''They went to their death with a look full of contempt for their asssassins.'' REUTERS PB BST0907