OF ALL the stories to come from the Holocaust, few are more harrowing than that of the Jewish doctor and writer Janusz Korczak and the 200 children under his care in the Warsaw Ghetto.

In 1940 Janusz Korczak’s Jewish orphanage was closed by the Nazis, and he and the children moved into the Warsaw Ghetto.

On August 5, 1942, having refused several offers to flee the ghetto and leave the children behind, he led the 200 children through the streets of the Ghetto to the trains waiting to transport them all to their deaths in Treblinka.

Confessions of a Butterfly relives the doctor’s last 24 hours in the ghetto, taken from his personal diary. It is being performed at Thomas Hardye School on February 27 as part of Holocaust Memorial Week.

Surrounded by his children, Dr Korczak deals with their comings and goings, their hopes and fears, with laughter and tears, as he contemplates his life and prepares to meet his destiny. But how can he prepare the children for their imminent fate? The play is written and performed by Jonathan Salt, who said: “Janusz Korczak had an orphanage in Warsaw but when they had to move into the ghetto he did a deal with a Polish school and swapped buildings. He didn’t want his children going to the Jewish school because he didn’t want them falling ill with typhoid.

“He was a well-known doctor, writer and had been a popular radio broadcaster and he used his contacts to get food for the children. Maybe he treated people in return for food. He lived on alcohol as his source of calories – Polish vodka that was used as an antiseptic, and towards the end he was very ill and preparing himself for death, either by the Nazis or his own ill health.”

Unlike Auschwitz, which was a concentration camp, Treblinka was a death camp which opened in July 1942 specifically for mass extermination. At one point it was ‘processing’ 17,000 people a day, with 98 per cent of people killed within three hours of their arrival.

“It was brutal and savage beyond belief but how much did people know?” said Jonathan. “To start with there were just rumours, but you wonder, as the time drew near, what he told the children?

“He believed that children should be respected and treated the same as adults. In the days before the end, he put on a play in the orphanage called The Post Office, by the Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, about a boy with an incurable disease. The boy dies at peace – and that is how Janusz Korczak prepared his children.

“On August 5, he led them out to the trains. They trusted him and were quiet and dignified. According to eye witnesses, some were singing and they carried the orphanage flag.

“He gave the children back their dignity and showed respect for what it is to be a human being.

Confessions of a Butterfly is at Thomas Hardye School theatre on Thursday at 7.30pm and has an age guidance of 14 and over.

Tickets are £10 plus concessions and family rates from Dorchester Arts Centre on 01305 266926, Dorchester TIC in Antelope Walk on 01305 267992 or online from dorchesterarts.org.uk