the boy and I

the boy with his hands raised

As I men­tioned here on April 10, when I was in my ear­ly 20s, I tried to imag­ine the life of the boy with his hands raised being led from the War­saw Ghet­to. I spent months with him, I kept his image before me dai­ly. I looked into his eyes, and I tried to look through his eyes.

the boy with his hands raised being led out of the War­saw Ghetto

I have known this pho­to­graph near­ly all my life. It is a pho­to­graph known to many oth­ers as well. I men­tioned in my ear­li­er post that it was pos­si­ble that the boy may not have died in the Sho’a.

Since then, I have stud­ied the pho­to­graph more and some of the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing it. Of par­tic­u­lar help was the book by Richard Raskin: A Child at Gun­point. A Case Study in the Life of a Pho­to. Aarhus Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2004. ISBN 87−7934−099−7. While it is pos­si­ble the boy may not have died in the Sho’a, Raskin’s book pret­ty thor­ough­ly proves that those who either claim to be the boy, or claim that he did sur­vive have lit­tle evi­dence to con­firm their stories.

The pho­to is so pow­er­ful that peo­ple seem to want to be that boy. Oth­ers have writ­ten poems (rather poor, in my esti­ma­tion) to him.

let’s get real

Why does Fis­chl call him “Pol­ish”… because he (Fis­chl) is Hun­gar­i­an by birth? Why not call him “Jew­ish”? If he was sim­ply a “lit­tle Pol­ish boy” there would be no pho­to­graph. Take a good look at the orig­i­nal pho­to above. Is there a star on the boy’s coat? How many machine guns are point­ed at him? (Of course, one is more than enough, but if Peter Fis­chl wants to write a poem about it he should per­ceive its details accu­rate­ly first.) Along with the pho­to, this poem has tak­en on a life of its own; so much so that in order to make the pho­to match the poem, a “star” was “pho­to­shopped” onto the boy’s coat. I’ve brought the two images togeth­er here (the star on the boy’s coat appears at minute 1:57 — 2:09 in the video):

com­pare pho­tos of boy with “star” (cir­cled)

There is no ques­tion that the pho­to­graph is pow­er­ful. It is pow­er­ful enough with­out being edit­ed. Raskin exam­ines the pho­to­graph from a visu­al per­spec­tive. Unlike many pho­tos from the Sho’a this one does not make us avert our eyes because it is too har­row­ing. Nonethe­less, the scene it depicts is out­ra­geous: a young, unarmed, boy (among many oth­ers) is forced to sur­ren­der. A high num­ber of polar oppo­sites are depict­ed (in Rask­in’s words):

• 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

Regard­ing the boy him­self, he stands alone in his own space. Addi­tion­al­ly, the boy’s face appears near the “Gold­en Sec­tion” or “Gold­en Ratio” of the pho­to­graph. It is an out­stand­ing­ly grip­ping photograph.

the boy with hands raised and the Gold­en Ratio

The pho­to is one of many, tak­en as the Nazis destroyed the War­saw Ghet­to dur­ing the Upris­ing. It was part of illus­tra­tive mate­r­i­al for what became known as “The Stroop Report”, named for Jür­gen Stroop, the com­man­der of the Ger­man forces respon­si­ble for liq­ui­dat­ing the Ghet­to. (Stroop is the man in the hat, not hel­met, who is not obscured in the pho­to below.) While we do not know for cer­tain who the pho­tog­ra­phers for the report were, two names are close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with it: Albert Cusian and Franz Kon­rad. Either one of them might have been the one to take the pho­to of the lit­tle boy. The iden­ti­ty of only one per­son in the pho­to of the lit­tle boy is known for cer­tain: the sol­dier stand­ing in the sun­light on the right side of the pho­to: Josef Blösche. Blösche appears in at least one oth­er pho­to­graph from the liq­ui­da­tion of the Ghet­to (in the pho­to below, once again, stand­ing on the far right).

Jür­gen Stroop directs the burn­ing of the Ghet­to (in cen­ter, in hat, not hel­met, not obscured) while Josef Blösche (on the far right) watches

other photos of the liquidation

A few oth­er pho­tographs of the destruc­tion of the War­saw Ghet­to have been used else­where. One with which I have had direct per­son­al involve­ment is cap­tioned in the Stroop Report “Heha­lutz women cap­tured with weapons”. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, we do not see any weapons in the photograph.

Heha­lutz women cap­tured with weapons; used on the cov­er of Davka, Vol. 1, No. 4, Sum­mer 1971 

The pho­to­graph was used on the cov­er of Vol­ume 1, No. 4 of Davka (Sum­mer 1971) devot­ed to “The Jew­ish Woman”, the orig­i­nal locus of Rachel Adler’s arti­cle “The Jew Who Was­n’t There”. These women were def­i­nite­ly there. The cap­tion in the low­er right cor­ner of the cov­er reads (inven­tive­ly) “The women fight­ers of the Ghet­to Ris­ing, after cap­ture, await their fate with res­o­lu­tion and dig­ni­ty. In a moment shots will be fired.” The cov­er was also made into a poster that was dis­trib­uted around Los Ange­les. Copies of it still hang in some homes.

but I digress… Jürgen Stroops words

While read­ing about the liq­ui­da­tion I came upon this tidbit:

After a care­ful review of the sit­u­a­tion, I decid­ed to end the Grand Oper­a­tion on the evening of May six­teenth, 1943, at eight-fif­teen in a suit­ably artis­tic man­ner — by blow­ing up the Great Syn­a­gogue near Tlo­mac­ka Street. Krüger had sug­gest­ed this finale dur­ing his War­saw vis­it, giv­ing Jesuit­er plans pre­pared by his top engi­neers in Krakow, show­ing how and where to bore holes and place explo­sives. This oper­a­tion took ten days to prepare.

the great syn­a­gogue of War­saw at Tło­mack­ie street

[Jür­gen Stroop in Kaz­imierz Moczars­ki, Con­ver­sa­tions with an Exe­cu­tion­er. Edit­ed by Mar­i­ana Fiz­patrick (Engle­wood Clifs: Pren­tice-Hall, 1981; orgi. pub­lished in Pol­ish 1977), page 164.]

There are 53 pho­tographs in the Stroop Report. We don’t know whether the sequence in which they appear in the Report is chrono­log­i­cal or was set for “artis­tic” pur­pos­es. For sim­i­lar artis­tic pur­pos­es, I imag­ine that the pho­to­graph of the lit­tle boy was tak­en that very last day… May six­teenth, 1943.

May sixteenth, 1943

this is posted on May sixteenth, 2010

My par­ents were born and grew up in Cleve­land, Ohio. Their par­ents were immi­grants from Ukraine (actu­al­ly, pater­nal: Chernigov [Cherni­hiv] Pale of Set­tle­ment and mater­nal, some 450KM north, from “Snof­sk” on the Dnieper), not far from Viteb­sk. At the time they left for the U.S. more than one third of the local pop­u­la­tion of Cherni­hiv and half of Viteb­sk was Jewish.

In Cleve­land, their fam­i­lies lived near Euclid Ave. and “the Kins­man Street­car”. My grand­par­ents were either athe­ists or (per­haps the mater­nal ones) agnos­tics. Both sets of grand­par­ents were involved in Jew­ish life. Hil­lel Hurvitz was active in the Yid­dish Work­ers’ Cho­rus. They cer­tain­ly would not have joined the Reform congregation.

The Tem­ple, Cleve­land, Ohio

Nonethe­less, we have always known that my par­ents were mar­ried in “the rab­bi’s study at the Tem­ple” dur­ing sefi­rat haOmer. A “spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion” was made because my father was in the army sta­tioned at Shep­pard Air Force Base in Wichi­ta Falls, Texas. Nei­ther of my sib­lings are aware of any pho­tos from the wed­ding itself. In fact, I don’t even remem­ber see­ing their ketubah.

Nathan Hurvitz & Faye Hurvitz as newlyweds

So, on May 16, 1943, at approx­i­mate­ly the same time that Jür­gen Stroop declared the destruc­tion of the War­saw Ghet­to as hav­ing been com­plete with the destruc­tion of the Reform Great Syn­a­gogue near Tlo­mac­ka Street, at a Reform tem­ple approx­i­mate­ly 4500 miles or 7000 kilo­me­ters away in the west, though I was not yet a glim­mer in my par­ents’ eyes (my sis­ter was born 10 months lat­er, 3 years before me) my life was beginning.

Today, very lit­tle is as it was then. The area of the War­saw Ghet­to was com­plete­ly razed by the Nazis.

from the Wikipedia: Ruins of War­saw Ghet­to, smashed into the ground by Ger­man forces, accord­ing to Adolf Hitler‘s order, after sup­press­ing of the War­saw Ghet­to Upris­ing in 1943. North-west view, left — the Krasiński‘s Gar­den and Swię­to­jer­s­ka street, pho­to tak­en in 1945

Almost noth­ing of the wartime rub­ble remains. Deb­bie and I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it War­saw dur­ing Pesach of 2006. We made a point of find­ing a bit of The Wall.

a remain­der of the wall enclos­ing the War­saw Ghetto

The res­i­dents of War­saw have built a new city and the area of the Great Syn­a­gogue near Tlo­mac­ka Street is now known as Bank Square (the Blue Tow­er) Błęk­it­ny Wieżowiec.

yet, the boy lives on

As I men­tioned in my April 10^th post­ing, I have used the image of the boy with his arms raised for my own pur­pos­es.

leaflet detail

I am hard­ly alone in this. Aside from the “poem” by Peter Fis­chl, Raskin reviews a num­ber of instances in which the image of the boy with raised hands appears in artis­tic and polit­i­cal works. Though I have been unable to find the film on YouTube, Raksin gives a very detailed (with stills) recon­struc­tion of the movie With Raised Hands (Pol­ish title: Z pod­nie­siony­mi reka­mi) by Mitko Panov. The film won the Gold­en Palm Award for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val in 1991. In Rask­in’s words:

The film is pure fic­tion in the sense that the writer/director imag­ined what might have hap­pened when the pho­to­graph was taken.

From the stills and shot-by-shot recon­struc­tion avail­able in Rask­in’s book, it is both very inven­tive and moving.

Oth­er cre­ative works include the British tele­vi­sion show The Glit­ter­ing Prizes (the final episode) and the works of Samuel Bak. I can imag­ine that many Chris­tians would feel that these two images by Bak are an affront to their reli­gious sen­si­bil­i­ties. And, on many lev­els I agree. Nei­ther the boy, nor any of the mil­lions of Jews and oth­ers mur­dered by the Nazis died for any­one’s sins.

Samuel Bak paints the boy with hands raised

I under­stand and appre­ci­ate how Chris­tians might feel when a sacred image is used by oth­ers to express some­thing that they might not iden­ti­fy with. And so I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly reject this attempt at “equiv­a­lence” when Israeli artist Alan Schech­n­er uses the image and con­nects it with a young boy cap­tured dur­ing the Intifa­da in a video that has one boy, recur­sive­ly, hold­ing the pho­to­graph of the oth­er.

Alan Schech­n­er’s transformations

a confusion of categories

I am not alone in oppos­ing Alan Schech­n­er’s use of the image. But, I also dis­ap­prove of this use of the image because of what I sense is a creep­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of oth­er events as “equiv­a­lent” to the liq­ui­da­tion of the War­saw Ghet­to. This week, as I write this post, a but­ton is avail­able for auc­tion on eBay which iden­ti­fies the mas­sacre of Sabra and Shati­la in 1982 with the destruc­tion of the War­saw Ghetto.

lapel but­ton com­par­ing War­saw Ghet­to in 1942 with Beirut in 1982

These two events are of dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories, and can­not be com­pared. At the same time, while we need to beware of our strength and be ever vig­i­lant of abus­es, we also need to guard against such com­par­isons. And so…

The fol­low­ing but­ton also uses the image of the boy with his hands raised. I have nev­er worn it, nor would I. It was pro­duced, prob­a­bly, some­time in the ear­ly 1970s by the Jew­ish Defense League in New York.

the boy with his hands raised (lapel button)

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear, or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lay­ing around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.