In the best-known photograph taken during the 1943

Warsaw Ghetto uprising The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; pl, powstanie w getcie warszawskim; german: link=no, Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's ...

, a boy holds his hands over his head while '' SS-Rottenführer''

Josef Blösche Josef Blösche (12 February 1912 – 29 July 1969) was a member of the Nazi Party who served in the SS and SD during World War II. Blösche shot and killed many Jews, and helped send many more Jews to their deaths in extermination camps. He als ...

points a submachine gun in his direction. The boy and others hid in a bunker during the final liquidation of the ghetto, but they were caught and forced out by German troops. After the photograph was taken, all of the Jews in the photograph were marched to the ''

Umschlagplatz ''Umschlagplatz'' (german: collection point or reloading point) was the term used during The Holocaust to denote the holding areas adjacent to railway stations in occupied Poland where Jews from ghettos were assembled for deportation to Nazi dea ...

'' and deported to

Majdanek extermination camp Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration camps, Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chamber ...

Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...

. The exact location and the photographer are not known, and Blösche is the only person in the photograph who can be identified with certainty. The image is one of the most famous photographs of the Holocaust, and the boy came to represent

children in the Holocaust During the Holocaust, children were especially vulnerable to death under the Nazi regime. According to estimations, 1.5 million children, nearly all Jewish, were murdered during the Holocaust, either directly or as a direct consequence of N ...

, as well as all Jewish victims.

Background

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

is the capital of Poland. Before the war, about 380,000 Jews lived there, about one-quarter of the population. Upon the

German invasion German invasion may refer to: Pre-1900s * German invasion of Hungary (1063) World War I * German invasion of Belgium (1914) * German invasion of Luxembourg (1914) World War II * Invasion of Poland * German invasion of Belgium (1940) * G ...

in September 1939, Jews began to be subject to

anti-Jewish laws Anti-Jewish laws have been a common occurrence throughout Jewish history. Examples of such laws include special Jewish quotas, Jewish taxes and Jewish "disabilities". Some were adopted in the 1930s and 1940s in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy an ...

. In 1941, they were forced to move to the

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...

, which contained as many as 460,000 people in only 2.4% of the city's area. The official food ration was only 180 calories per person daily. Although being caught on the "Aryan" side of the city was an offense punishable by death, people survived by smuggling and running illegal workshops. In mid-1942, most of the Jews in the

were

deported Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...

to the

Treblinka extermination camp Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...

. In January 1943, when the Germans resumed deportations, the

Jewish Combat Organization The Jewish Combat Organization ( pl, Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB; yi, ''Yidishe Kamf Organizatsie''; often translated to English as the Jewish Fighting Organization) was a World War II resistance movement in occupied Poland, which wa ...

staged armed resistance. Jews began to dig bunkers and smuggle weapons into the ghetto. On 19 April 1943, about 2,000 soldiers under the command of SS and Police Leader

Jürgen Stroop Jürgen Stroop (born Josef Stroop, 26 September 1895 – 6 March 1952) was a German SS commander during the Nazi era, who served as SS and Police Leader in occupied Poland and Greece. He led the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 194 ...

entered the ghetto with tanks in order to liquidate the ghetto. They expected to quickly defeat the poorly armed Jewish insurgents, but instead the

, the largest act of Jewish resistance against the Holocaust, dragged on for four weeks. The Germans had to set the ghetto on fire, pump poison gas into bunkers, and blast the Jews out of their positions in order to march them to the ''

'' and deport them to

Majdanek Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, a ...

and Treblinka. According to the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...

, " is seemingly hopeless struggle... became one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people". During the suppression of the uprising, Stroop sent daily communiqués to Higher SS and Police Leader

Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger (8 May 1894 – 10 May 1945) was a German war criminal and paramilitary commander acting as a high-ranking member of the SA and the SS. Between 1939 and 1943 he was the Higher SS and Police Leader in the General Govern ...

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

; Propaganda Company 689 and Franz Konrad took photographs to document the events. Selected photographs and communiqués were compiled, along with a summary of German actions, as the

Stroop Report The Stroop Report is an official report prepared by General Jürgen Stroop for the SS chief Heinrich Himmler, recounting the German suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the liquidation of the ghetto in the spring of 1943. Originally tit ...

, a personal souvenir for

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...

. The report was intended to promote Stroop's efficiency as a commander and excuse his failure to clear the ghetto quickly. The report memorialized the supposed heroism of the SS men who participated in the suppression of the uprising, especially the sixteen who were killed by Jewish fighters. More than 7,000 Jews were shot during the uprising, the vast majority noncombatants. The original title of the report was ''The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is No More!'' (german: Es gibt keinen jüdischen Wohnbezirk in Warschau mehr!). Reflecting

Nazi propaganda The propaganda used by the German Nazi Party in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's dictatorship of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 to 1945 was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power, and for the implementation o ...

, the report

dehumanized Dehumanization is the denial of full humanness in others and the cruelty and suffering that accompanies it. A practical definition refers to it as the viewing and treatment of other persons as though they lack the mental capacities that are c ...

the Jews, describing them as "

bandits Banditry is a type of organized crime committed by outlaws typically involving the threat or use of violence. A person who engages in banditry is known as a bandit and primarily commits crimes such as extortion, robbery, and murder, either as an ...

", "

lice Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order, infraorder, or a parvorder, as a result o ...

", or "rats" and their deportation and murder as a " cleansing action". Instead of being killed or murdered, Jews were "destroyed". Three copies of the report were made, for Himmler, Krüger, and Stroop. One copy of the Stroop Report is held by the

Institute of National Remembrance The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation ( pl, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, abbreviated IPN) is a Polish state resea ...

(IPN) in Warsaw. Another copy was entered into evidence at the

Nuremberg Trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 ...

, although the photograph was not ultimately shown to the court. That copy is held by the United States

National Archives and Records Administration The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...

(NARA).

Photograph

The photograph was taken during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (between 19 April and 16 May) in the Warsaw Ghetto. An Internet forum discussion on the "Marki Commuter Railway" Association for Defending the Remnant of Warsaw cautiously identified the location as Nowolipie 34 from similarities in the architectural details, especially the

downspout A downspout, waterspout, downpipe, drain spout, drainpipe, roof drain pipe,Francis Joseph Patry 1974. Roof Drain ArrangementUnited States Patent 3909412< or leader is a

The photographer was either Franz Konrad or a member of Propaganda Company 689. Albert Cusian, Erhard Josef Knoblach and Arthur Grimm served as photographers in Propaganda Company 689; Cusian may have claimed to have taken the photograph. On trial in Poland, Konrad claimed to have taken photographs during the uprising only so that he could complain about Stroop's brutality to

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

. The court did not accept this claim. Convicted of personally murdering seven Jews and deporting a thousand others to death camps, Konrad was sentenced to death and executed in 1952. The photograph depicts a group of Jewish men, women and children who have been forced out of a bunker by armed German soldiers. The original caption was "Forcibly pulled out of bunkers" (german: Mit Gewalt aus Bunkern hervorgeholt). Most of the Jews are wearing ragged clothing and have few personal possessions. After being removed from the bunker, they were marched to the ''Umschlagplatz'' for deportation to an

extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (german: Vernichtungslager), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocaust. The v ...

. In the center of the photograph is a small boy wearing a newsboy cap and knee-length socks who appears six or seven years old. He holds his hands up in surrender as '' SS-Rottenführer''

holds a submachine gun pointing downwards in his direction. The photograph contains many opposites; as Richard Raskin put it: "SS vs. Jews, perpetrators vs. victims, military vs. civilians, power vs. helplessness, threatening hands on weapons vs. empty hands raised in surrender, steel helmets vs bare-headedness or soft caps, smugness vs. fear, security vs. doom, men vs. women and children". According to Frédéric Rousseau, Stroop probably chose to include the photograph in the report because it showed his ability to overcome

Judeo-Christian The term Judeo-Christian is used to group Christianity and Judaism together, either in reference to Christianity's derivation from Judaism, Christianity's borrowing of Jewish Scripture to constitute the "Old Testament" of the Christian Bible, or ...

morality and attack innocent women and children.

Identification

The boy

There are several individuals who have been claimed to be the boy in the photo, but his identity remains unclear. All of the proposed claimants' stories are inconsistent with the known facts about the photograph. The boy was probably younger than ten, because he was not wearing a Star of David armband. Dr.

Lucjan Dobroszycki Lucjan Dobroszycki (January 15, 1925 – October 24, 1995, in New York City) was a Polish scientist and historian specializing in modern Polish and Polish-Jewish history. A survivor of the Łódź Ghetto and Nazi concentration camps including Ausc ...

, a historian employed by the

Yivo Institute for Jewish Research YIVO (Yiddish: , ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. (The word '' ...

who has studied the photograph, stated that "This photograph of the most dramatic event of the Holocaust requires a greater level of responsibility from historians than almost any other... is too holy to let people do with it what they want." * Artur Dąb Siemiątek, born in

Łowicz Łowicz is a town in central Poland with 27,896 inhabitants (2020). It is situated in the Łódź Voivodeship (since 1999); previously, it was in Skierniewice Voivodeship (1975–1998). Together with a nearby station of Bednary, Łowicz is a ma ...

in 1935, was first proposed as the subject of the photo in 1950. Siemiątek was from a well-off family and his father was a member of the ''Judenrat'' in the Łowicz Ghetto, liquidated to Warsaw in 1941. Jadwiga Piesecka, a cousin of Siemiątek and resident of Warsaw, and her husband fled to the Soviet Union in September 1939. They survived the Holocaust and signed affidavits that Siemiątek was the boy in the photo in the 1970s. * In 1999, a 95-year-old man named Avrahim Zelinwarger told the Ghetto Fighters House in Israel that the boy in the photo was his son, Levi Zeilinwarger, born in 1932. Avrahim escaped to the Soviet Union in 1940, but his wife Chana (who would be the woman in the photograph), son, and daughter are all believed to have been killed during the Holocaust. Richard Raskin personally doubted the Zelinwarger claim because of the lack of resemblance between Levi and the boy in the photograph. * In 1978, Israel Rondel told the ''

Jewish Chronicle Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

'' that he was the boy in the photograph, but because he said that the photograph was taken in 1941, and other details do not match, his claim has been dismissed. * Tsvi Chaim Nussbaum ( de, fr) (1936–2012) was born in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...

but his family returned to Poland before the war. He lived in hiding on the "Aryan" side of Warsaw. Since he and his family had valid Palestinian visas, they fell into the

Hotel Polski Hotel Polski (lit. Polish Hotel), opened in 1808, was a hotel in Śródmieście, Warsaw, Poland, at 29 Długa street. In 1943, in the mop up operation following the liquidation of Warsaw Ghetto, the hotel was used by Germans as bait for Jews ...

trap in which the Germans promised safe passage out of occupied Europe. Liberated by American troops at

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concent ...

in 1945, Nussbaum stated in 1982 that he had been arrested in front of the Hotel Polski on 13 July 1943 and forced to raise his arms as depicted. Although some Jewish organizations uncritically accepted this claim at the time it was made, it is not possible that Nussbaum was the boy in the photo. Nussbaum himself never claimed to be certain about the identification, saying "I think it’s me, but I can’t honestly swear to it. A million and a half Jewish children were told to raise their hands". Dobroszycki pointed out the discrepancies between Nussbaum's claim and what is known about the photograph. All images in the Stroop Report are believed to have been taken inside the Warsaw Ghetto, while the Hotel Polski is not in the ghetto. The Hotel Polski roundups occurred in a courtyard, while the photograph depicts a street. Most of the Jews in the photograph are wearing heavy clothing, which suggests that the photograph was not taken in July; they are wearing armbands that they would not have worn while in hiding on the "Aryan" side of the city. The Germans are wearing combat uniforms which they would not have needed at the Hotel Polski roundups. Furthermore, Nussbaum was arrested more than a month after the Stroop Report was delivered to Himmler. A comparison with Nussbaum's 1945 photograph by

forensic anthropologist Forensic anthropology is the application of the anatomical science of anthropology and its various subfields, including forensic archaeology and forensic taphonomy, in a legal setting. A forensic anthropologist can assist in the identification o ...

K. R. Burns of the

University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...

revealed that Nussbaum had detached earlobes, unlike the boy in the photograph.

Other individuals

The woman emerging from the building directly behind the boy was Gołda Stawarowska, according to Stawarowska's granddaughter Golda Shulkes. The boy with the white bag over his shoulder was identified as Ahron Leizer (Leo) Kartuziński (or Kartuzinsky) (Photograph Number: 26543) from

Gdańsk Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...

by his sister, Hana Ichengrin. The same person was also identified as Harry-Haim Nieschawer. Polish-American Holocaust survivor Esther Grosband-Lamet said that the small girl on the extreme left foreground was her niece Channa (Hanka) Lamet (or Hannah Lemet) (1937–1943) who was murdered at Majdanek. The woman wearing the scarf would then be Hanka's mother Matylda Goldfinger-Lamet or Mathylda Lamet Goldfinger, married to Mosze Lamet; the family was from Warsaw. Stroop Report - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - Josef Blösche

Stroop Report - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - Josef Blösche

The only identification that is certain is that of ''

Rottenführer ''Rottenführer'' (, ) was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was first created in the year 1932. The rank of ''Rottenführer'' was used by several Nazi paramilitary groups, among them the ''Sturmabteilung'' (SA), the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) an ...

, the SS man aiming the MP 28 submachine gun at the boy. Blösche was born in the

Sudetenland The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and sk, Sudety) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the ...

in 1912 and served in the ''

Einsatzgruppen (, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...

'', and he was a policeman employed at the Warsaw Ghetto during the uprising.

Marek Edelman Marek Edelman ( yi, מאַרעק עדעלמאַן, born either 1919 in Homel or 1922 in Warsaw – October 2, 2009 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish political and social activist and cardiologist. Edelman was the last surviving leader of the ...

testified that Blösche murdered Jews as part of his "daily routine" and he was known to have committed violence against children and pregnant women. Due to his performance during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Blösche was awarded the War Merit Cross 2nd Class with Swords. Blösche appears in several of the photographs in the Stroop Report. During his trial in

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

, the photographs were used as circumstantial evidence for the prosecution. He was convicted of the murder of at least 2,000 people and executed in 1969. Of the photograph, Blösche stated: During the trial, the Judge asked Blösche about the events depicted in the infamous photograph:

Judge: "You were with a submachine gun...against a small boy that you extracted from a building with his hands raised. How did those inhabitants react in those moments?" Blösche: "They were in tremendous dread." Judge: "This reflects well in that little boy. What did you think?" Blösche: "We witnessed scenes like these daily. We could not even think."

Legacy

Stroop Report - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 06b

Stroop_Report_-_Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising_06c

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' published the picture on 26 December 1945 along with others from the Stroop Report, which had been entered into evidence at the Nuremberg Trial. On 27 December it reprinted the photograph, stating: The photograph was not well known until the 1970s, perhaps because most countries preferred to celebrate resistance to Nazism rather than the anonymous victims. In 1969, it appeared on the cover of the English edition of the work ''The Yellow Star''. In 2016, ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' Magazine listed it as one of the 100 most influential photographs of all time, stating that it had an "evidentiary impact" exceeding that of the many other "searing images" produced during the Holocaust; the child "has come to represent the face of the 6 million defenseless Jews killed by the Nazis". Several books have been written about the photograph, including ''A Child at Gunpoint: A Case Study in the Life of a Photo'' by Richard Raskin, ''The Boy: A Holocaust Story'' by

Dan Porat Dan Porat is an Israeli historian and author who works for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public re ...

, and ''L'Enfant juif de Varsovie. Histoire d'une photographie'' () by Frédéric Rousseau. The photograph is perceived quite differently by the SS man who took it and other observers; in Raskin's words, "one set of men saw in that photograph heroic soldiers combating humanity's dregs while the vast majority of mankind sees here the gross inhumanity of man". According to

Eva Fogelman Eva Fogelman is an American psychologist, writer, filmmaker and a pioneer in the treatment of psychological effects of the Holocaust on survivors and their descendants. She is the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book ''Conscience and Cour ...

, the photograph has promoted the myth that Jews went passively "

like sheep to the slaughter "Like sheep to the slaughter" ( he, כצאן לטבח) is a phrase which refers to the idea that Jews went passively to their deaths during the Holocaust. It derives from a similar phrase in the Hebrew Bible which positively depicts martyrdom in ...

". The image has been used in some controversial artwork juxtaposing the Warsaw Ghetto uprising with the

Second Intifada The Second Intifada ( ar, الانتفاضة الثانية, ; he, האינתיפאדה השנייה, ), also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada ( ar, انتفاضة الأقصى, label=none, '), was a major Palestinian uprising against Israel. ...

in Gaza, which some argue is tantamount to

Holocaust trivialization Holocaust trivialization is any comparison or analogy that diminishes the impact of the Holocaust, the Nazi genocide of six million European Jews during World War II. The Wiesel Commission defined trivialization as the abusive use of comparison ...

. In ''The Legacy of Abused Children: from Poland to Palestine'' by British-Israeli artist Alan Schechner, a camera zooms in on the boy in the photo, who is holding a different photograph of a child in Gaza being carried by

IDF IDF or idf may refer to: Defence forces * Irish Defence Forces * Israel Defense Forces *Iceland Defense Force, of the US Armed Forces, 1951-2006 * Indian Defence Force, a part-time force, 1917 Organizations * Israeli Diving Federation * Interac ...

soldiers. Schechner stated that he did not intend to compare the Holocaust with the

Israeli–Palestinian conflict The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is one of the world's most enduring conflicts, beginning in the mid-20th century. Various attempts have been made to resolve the conflict as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, alongside other ef ...

, but merely illustrate the suffering of children because of the

cycle of violence The term cycle of violence refers to repeated and dangerous acts of violence as a cyclical pattern,Norman Finkelstein Norman Gary Finkelstein (; born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist, former professor, and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a gr ...

in a photo-essay titled "''Deutschland über alles''", also juxtaposing the Warsaw photograph with images of Palestinian suffering. The subtitle read in all caps: "the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done to them by Nazi Germany". The Holocaust survivor and artist

Samuel Bak Samuel Bak ( he, שמואל בק; born 12 August 1933) is a Lithuanian-American painter and writer who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Israel in 1948. Since 1993, he has lived in the United States. Biography Samuel Bak was born in Wilno ( ...

has created a series of more than a hundred paintings inspired by the photograph, as well as by his own experiences and the memory of a lost childhood friend. In these works, the boy's extended arms are often depicted with a crucifixion theme or with the boy seen as a part of an imagined monument. Both NARA and IPN describe the image as in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

. However, in the 1990s

Corbis Corporation BEN Group Inc (BEN) is a Los Angeles-based product placement, influencer marketing and licensing agency, licensing company. The company offers product placement, rights clearance, and personality rights management services for the entertainment ...

acquired the photograph from

Bettmann Archive The Bettmann Archive is a collection of over 11 million photographs and images, some going back to the United States Civil War and including some of the best known U.S. historic images. The Archive also includes many images from Europe and elsewh ...

and licensed three versions of it, charging commercial rates for its usage. ,

Getty Images Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is an American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets— creative ...

, which acquired Corbis license rights in 2016, continues to offer it for sale, providing a copy of it with a copyright claim watermark as a sample.

Background

Photograph

Identification

The boy

Other individuals

Legacy

Notes

References

Further reading