Tagore's Dakghar : The Play in the Ghetto

There are innumerable instances of Rabindranath Tagore influencing the lives and thoughts of people all around the world with his writings, songs and paintings. On his 150^th birth anniversary it would not be out of place to recollect how one of his most powerful dramas, Dakghar, did wonders to a group of children who were fated to be gassed by the Nazis in Poland by identifying their world with that of Amal. Tagore wrote this drama in 1912 which falls in the beginning of a period which is known as the post-Geetanjali period. During this period of his life one finds spiritualism gradually taking the centre of the stage. Some have classified the play as allegorical while others call it symbolic, but the theme of the play written in a language which he himself called lyrical prose, is the celebration of life and the acceptance of death as a call from beyond. The abstraction is so intense yet so placid that the reader or the viewer experiences the emotive power that the playwright had brought in the play. It would be interesting to go through a letter Tagore wrote to Monilal Gangopadhyay about the urge of emotions he felt that made him write Dakghar.  He writes that he felt that it was time for him to go and before that he would have to travel round the world to know the feelings of happiness and joy and all the exuberance of living that the people have all around. He said that one night when he was all engrossed in the work of his school, he felt that something was coming his way, may be death, and he had to go. And he speaks of expressing this sense of going ....this death...in his Dakghar. But he says he felt no sorrow or no pangs of bereavement and instead there was a peculiar joy that one feels at the time of separation or leave-taking.  These words of Tagore very well sum up the philosophy behind his creation of Dakghar.  The play was translated into English by W.B. Yeats as The Post Office, and this brought the play to the world. The translated version was staged in London the next year by an Irish group. It is interesting to note that Juan Ramón Jiménez translated the play into Spanish. The French translation was done by André Gide and was read on the radio the night before Paris fell to the Nazis.

A Polish doctor of Jewish origin, Henryk Goldszmit (1878 - 1942) who was better known as Janusz Korczak, his pen name as a children's author did wonders with this play of Tagore. The following is a brief account of the doctor’s work.

In 1911–1912 Korczak built Dom Sierot, an orphanage of his own design for Jewish children in Warsaw. When the Nazis created the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, his orphanage was forced to move to the ghetto. Korczak moved in with them. It was the typical German Ghetto that treated the Jews as creatures fit for the gutters. There were regulations enforced that condemned the inmates to lives of indignity and humiliation.  Terrorizing the residents was the only authoritative governance they could employ. The basic amenities and supplies were dearer and the inhabitants depended on the smugglers to bring them supplies especially bread from across the walls. Things deteriorated fast and in the month of July in 1942 the administration in the name of eliminating smugglers slaughtered people who helped the ghetto inhabitants to get their life sustaining supplies from across the walls. The ambience that prevailed in the ghetto was one of gloominess and despair. This had also percolated into the orphanage that teemed with almost 200 bubbling Jewish kids of all ages.

The doctor was tormented and thought out ways of providing strength of mind to the children so that they can bear any unpleasant eventuality that would come their way. He knew that the children could also confront Death that may come in any guise. He believed that if the kids could be provided with something they could get comfort from they would be ready for any contingency. He planned to present them a metaphysical world which would help them transcend their present state of things. He wrote a fantasy, Strange Happenings, which he dedicated to one of the youngest boys in the orphanage, Szymonek Jakubowicz. Here, he tells the story of an astronomer, Professor Zi, who lives on a planet called Ro. The astronomer could develop moral power with which he could bring joy and tranquility everywhere in the universe except on this Earth where people though living together were fighting amongst themselves. He knew that it would not be judicious to coerce them and force them to change their ways and so he let them develop on their own. He believed that the young Earth would learn when time comes.

The doctor devised other methods, too, to involve everyone around to uplift their spirits. He asked the children to write diaries that would act as a catharsis for their inner feelings and also to work for each other. He knew that these were not enough and was in search for more ideas. He knew he needed superhuman power to save the children and ultimately he found the solution in the play, The Post Office, by Rabindranath Tagore. The story of the play was about a dying orphan, Amal, who enriches the lives of those who comes in contact with him. Korczak found the content so close to what he had thought about all these days. Yeats in his preface to the play had mentioned about the deliverance sought and won by Amal. This was exactly what Korczak wanted to deliver.

Esterka Winogron, who used to assist Korczak on his medical rounds of the orphanage, volunteered to direct the play. Auditions were held and the lead part of Amal was given to Abrasha, a popular boy who played the violin. Three weeks of rehearsals were scheduled, and the performance date set for Saturday, July 18.

The large room on the first floor of the orphanage was filled with friends and colleagues intrigued by the invitations written in Korczak's unique style:

We are not in the habit of promising anything we cannot deliver. We believe that an hour's performance of an enchanting tale by one who is both a philosopher and a poet will provide an experience - of the highest order of sensibility.

Appended to the invitation, with which admission was free, were a few words by Korczak's friend, the young poet Wladyslaw Szlengel, who would gain posthumous fame after his death in the Ghetto Uprising:

It transcends the test - being a mirror of the soul.
It transcends emotion - being an experience.
It transcends mere acting - being the work of children.

The night before the play there was an incidence of mass food poisoning that spread through the house. Korczak tended to the children throughout and luckily the children pulled themselves together in time for the performance at 4:30 the next afternoon.

The audience was captivated and could discover allegories and to identify to the world around. It was clear from the hushed silence at the end of the play that Korczak had succeeded in providing the adults as well as the children with a sense of liberation from their present lives and had lifted them at least momentarily, to some realm not only beyond the walls of the ghetto but beyond life itself. The children could identify Amal as their ownself and saw the King who did not appear in the play but remained present all through as the Angel of Bliss.

When asked why he chose that play, Korczak is reported to have said that he wanted to help the children accept death. In his diary he makes only a short notation about the afternoon:

The children had seemed so natural in their parts that he wondered what would happen if they were to continue in their roles the next day: If Jerzyk were to imagine he really was a fakir, Chaimek a real doctor, and Adek the lord mayor?

On  July 18, Saturday, The Post Office was performed in Korczak's orphanage and on  August 5 (some say August 6), 1942, German soldiers came to collect the 192 (there is some debate about the actual number and it may have been 196) orphans and about one dozen staff members to take them to Treblinka extermination camp. Korczak had been offered sanctuary on the “Aryan side” of Warsaw but he refused to leave the children saying that he could not abandon his children. Korczak with most of his children were exterminated in a gas chamber upon their arrival at Treblinka.