A Field of Buttercups

Author: Joe Hyams
Genre: Non-fiction
Publisher: Muller, 1969
Pages: 220
Rating: Recommend


Synopsis: By the age of 30, Janusz Korczak gave up a successful medical practice and the possibility of family of his own to open the Our Children's Home orphanage for Jewish children in Warsaw. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the orphanage was forced to move into the Warsaw Ghetto. Three years later Treblinka II death camp was opened and every week thousands of Jews were deported to die there. Even when news of the genocide filtered back into the ghetto, the Jewish population there refused to believe what was happening and preferred to shut out this reality grasping for hope.  

On August 5, 1942, the orphanage was evacuated from the ghetto to the death camps. Dr Korczak was given the option of abandoning the 200 Jewish children in his care, but chose to die together with the children. This cruel act helped to ignite the Warsaw ghetto uprisings, fueled by the cry "Remember Dr Korczak's orphans".

Two weeks after the evacuation of Dr Korczak's orphange to the death camps, the first blows were struck in the Warsaw Ghetto uprsising. 

This book is a moving novelization of Dr Korczak's work in the orphanage and the story of the children who lived there, dealing with the stories of some of the children there. It ends with a description of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Review: The depth of goodness in human spirit and the very worst of human spirit meet once again as it always does in books about the life and times surrounding World War II. 


Chapter 12 is the most moving and horrifying in this book.


The subject matter isn't easy to read, but it's necessary. We must never perform the atrocities that the Jews experienced and we can only hope to prevent ourselves from becoming victims of such horror by being educated and remaining vigilant.