Welcome back viewers
The iconic image for this month is...
The Warsaw Ghetto boy
Intro
This photograph depicts a group of unarmed people (mostly women and children) being forced from a building into a street. They are being held at gunpoint by heavily armed soldiers. At the centerpiece of the image is a small boy who stands slightly away from the crowd with his hands raised above his head. The look on his face is one of complete terror. Behind him, an emotionless soldier aims a gun in the boy's direction. This image would ultimately come to symbolize a horrific chapter of human barbarity. One that continues to haunt humanity to this day.
Part I
In April of 1943, thousands of Jews were imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto. After most of them had been deported to death camps, the ones that remained decided to revolt against their captors. Despite being severely outnumbered and outgunned, the Jews in the Warsaw decided that they were going to escape from the ghetto or die trying. After receiving weapons and ammunition from the Polish underground, the Jews launched their attack on April 19.
Although the nazi guards were caught by surprise (they thought the Jews had been broken by now), they quickly retaliated. Led by a fanatical member of the German SS (Jürgen Stroop), they attacked the ghetto with tanks and planes. After nearly a month of fighting, Stroop demanded that the Jewish insurgents surrender. When the latter refused, he ordered the Warsaw ghetto to be burned down. When it was over, nearly all of insurgents were either dead or captured. Only about 200 managed to successfully escape.
As the ghetto was being liquidated, Stroop ordered his subordinates to document his, "triumphant victory". Hundreds of photographs and hours of video footage were taken inside the Warsaw ghetto as it was being liquidated. At least 50 of these photographs were published in an infamous 125-page report labeled the, "Stroop Report". It was originally called, "Es gibt keinen jüdischen Wohnbezirk in Warsaw mehr! (The Jewish Quarter in Warsaw is no more!)". In this report, Jürgen Stroop (and other notorious members of the SS) bragged about crushing the uprising, used dehumanizing terms for the Jews, and presented the photographs with racist captions. One photograph in particular however, would ultimately cause outrage around the world and become an iconic symbol of the barbarity that was the Holocaust.
Part II
Since it was first developed there have been numerous efforts to identify the ghetto boy. At least four different boys were initially identified. The most credible of these four was, Tsvi Nussbaum.
Nussbaum had been born in the year, 1936. He and his family went into hiding, but were caught and arrested in 1943, at a roundup near a Polish hotel called, "Hotel Polski". Nussbaum described being ordered to raise his hands high above his head during the arrest and forced at gun point through a courtyard. He was then separated from his family and taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He survived to be liberated and testified about his experiences. For many years, he was believed to be the Warsaw ghetto boy by the general public. However, recent investigations by historians seem to have disproven this.
If one were to compare Tsvi Nussbaum's photo to the boy in the ghetto, they would notice that the latter has attached earlobes. Nussbaum's are clearly detached. And by his own testimony, Nussbaum admitted that he and his family had been arrested at the Hotel Polski, which was not located in the Warsaw Ghetto. He also claimed to have been arrested on July 13, 1943. At least two months after the ghetto uprising had been put down. When all of these factors are considered, it becomes clear that Tsvi Nussbaum, could not have been the boy in the photograph. When asked about it, Nussbaum replied, "I am not claiming anything - there is no reward. I didn't ask for this honor. 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". Tsvi Nussbaum passed away in 2012.
Part III
There is only one individual in the photograph that has been identified beyond any doubt. It is the man who is standing behind the boy. The man who is pointing the sub-machine gun at him with a look of complete impassiveness, SS-Rottenfuhur Josef Blösche.
Blösche's identity can be verified because this photograph is not the only one to feature him in the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto. In the Stroop Report, Josef Blösche was photographed at least five times. Like his commanding officer (Jürgen Stroop) Blösche took great pleasure in gunning down unarmed people and burning down the ghetto. For his great and noble "valor" in the Warsaw Ghetto, Blösche received the German War Cross of Merit. Little did he know, that the images taken of his role in crushing the uprising would eventually come back to haunt him.
Epilogue
After Germany's defeat in 1945, Jürgen Stroop was arrested and charged with war crimes. At the US Military Tribunal in the Dachau concentration camp, he was convicted of the murder of nine American prisoners of war and sentenced to hang. Before the sentence was carried out however, the American Justices agreed to an extradition request by the Polish government. In 1947, Stroop was flown from Germany back to Poland to stand trial for his crimes in Warsaw. In 1951, he was convicted of overseeing the murder of more than 50,000 people. He was hanged on March 6, 1952. Today he is remembered as one of the most evil and vicious men to ever walk the face of the Earth.
Josef Blösche was captured by the Red Army in 1945. After spending two years in a labour camp he was released. He spent the next nineteen years living in the German village of, Urbach where he worked as a master tradesman. But in 1967, his horrific crimes came back to haunt him. When the Stroop Report was released to the public in 1961, eye-witnesses were able to identify Blösche in at least five of the fifty-three photographs (including the one with boy). He was arrested on January 11, 1967. On April 30, 1969, Josef Blösche was convicted of crimes against humanity by an East German court. He was executed on July 29 of that year.
Although the picture of the Warsaw Ghetto Boy was officially published in 1945, it did not attract much attention until the 1970s. Despite numerous attempts to identify the boy, none have been able to find anything conclusive. Investigations to identify other people in the photo have also returned inconclusive. During his trial, Josef Blösche was asked about the incident. He replied, "The picture shows me, as a member of the Gestapo office in the Warsaw Ghetto, together with a group of SS members, driving a large group of Jewish citizens out from a house. The group of Jewish citizens is comprised predominantly of children, women and old people, driven out of a house through the gateway, with their arms raised. The Jewish citizens were then led to the so-called Umschlagplatz, from which they were transported to the extermination camp Treblinka". Based on this statement, it is highly unlikely that any of these people (including the young boy) survived the war.
Some of the most powerful photographs ever taken are very difficult for people to look at. While many images depict acts of bravery, valor, and hope, there are also many that depict suffering and tragedy. The photo of the Warsaw Ghetto Boy is one of these images. It tells the story of one of the darkest chapters of human history and serves as a warning of the human capacity for great evil. Although the boy's identity will probably never be discovered, his legacy lives on. He remains an iconic symbol of all the children who perished in the Holocaust.
http://100photos.time.com/photos/jewish-boy-surrenders-warsaw
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/josef-bl-ouml-sche
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/the-ghetto-the-nazis-and-one-small-boy/
http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/stroop/index.html
http://www.auschwitz.dk/Star/Nussbaum.htm
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/boy.html
https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/contents/germanbiographies/josefblosche.html
No comments:
Post a Comment