Greetings from the City of Munich!
It was a historic step that made the world a little bit better: 25 years ago, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was enshrined and ratified by almost all countries. One of those who paved the way for this declaration with his visions and his actions was the Polish pediatrician and educator Janusz Korczak. As early as 1920, he insisted on the unrestricted respect of the child’s personality as the basis of all children’s rights, thus already evoking the spirit of today’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. The fact that Janusz Korczak later remained at the side of his Jewish orphanage children in the Warsaw Ghetto and voluntarily accompanied them to certain death in the Treblinka extermination camp makes him and his mission a shining example of humanity for all time. Today, numerous institutions and societies around the world name themselves after Janusz Korczak and have taken the child rights activist and social reformer as their role model.
The European Janusz Korczak Academy in Munich is also committed to the legacy of Janusz Korczak. In addition to general humanitarian issues concerning children’s and human rights, the Jewish educational institution, founded in 2009, is also dedicated to ideas and projects that focus on Jewish life in Munich, Bavaria and throughout Germany. With cultural programs, lectures, seminars, workshops and exhibitions, the EJKA promotes intercultural and interreligious dialogue. The City of Munich expressly welcomes the exemplary commitment of EJKA and therefore regularly supports the association’s projects. For example, the annual “Janusz Korczak Days – Days of Children’s Rights”, as well as dozens of exhibitions of artists with a migration background over the years or, most recently, the film series “Young, Jewish, Bavarian”, which was shown this year at the Munich International Documentary Film Festival.
These are all great events with which the European Janusz Korczak Academy is committed to equal and humane coexistence in our city in the spirit of its namesake. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks for this!
Dieter Reiter
Lord Mayor of the City of Munich