Warsaw, August 1942. Janusz Korczak, a pediatrician who became an admired educator, renounces the opportunity to remain alive and escorts the children of the orphanage he had established and so lovingly managed, to the ghetto and from there, on their final journey. Korczak, together with two hundred of his pupils, were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp where they met their death.

In his book, White House in a Gray City, Yitzhak Balfer tells the story of the eight years of his life in Korczak's orphanage, shedding light on his character and helping to immortalize the memory of this wonderful man. He also describes the saga of his own incredible escape to Russia through the forests of Poland that left him as the sole survivor of a large family all of whose other members perished during the Holocaust.

This is the fascinating tale of the only place that preserved the light and gave hope to so many children during the war, amid hunger, disease, hardship, and the impossibility of growing up as normal children.