The boy in the Holocaust Photo! | holocaustresearchproject's Blog

The Boy in the Photo?

The Warsaw Ghetto & The Stroop Report

The above photo is one of the most iconic photographs of the Holocaust, the German Guard pointing the machine gun is known, the little boy is not known, but some of the other people captured in this photo, have been identified.

The photo was included in the infamous Stroop Report – “The Warsaw Ghetto no longer exists.”

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Extracts from the book by Richard Raskin

The Boy in the Photograph

There are four possible identities for the little boy at gunpoint. 

• Artur Dab Siemiatek

It was advanced as early as 1950, but documentation was first found in 1977-78, one source was responsible for making the claim, a woman named Jadwiga Piesecka, who was a resident of Warsaw.

According to a statement she signed on 24 January 1977, the boy in the photograph was named Artur Siemiatek born in Lowicz in 1935.

He was the son of Leon Siemiatek, and Sara Dab and the grandson of the signatory’s brother Josef Dab.

A similar attestation was signed the following year in Paris by Jadwiga Piesecka’s husband, Henryk Piasecki, dated 28 December 1978. 

• Tsvi Nussbaum

   

  In 1982 a 47 year old ear, nose and throat specialist in Rockland County New York, came forward that in 1943, at the age of seven, he had been arrested in Warsaw and ordered to raise his hands by an SS man standing in front of him and aiming a gun at him. And although he could not recall that a photograph was taken, Dr Nussbaum believes that he might be the child in the picture.

   

  Tsvi Nussbaum expressed uncertainty that he was the boy in the photo, whilst others say that it is him. There are indeed two specific factors that heavily way up, against him being that boy.

   

  The first is that although he was arrested in Warsaw, he had never set foot in the ghetto- the second is the date he was arrested. Tsvi Nussbaum clearly remembers that he was arrested on 13 July 1943. This was nearly two months after the Stroop report is thought to have been completed, and sent to Himmler and Kruger.

   

  In the early 30’s Nussbaum’s parents emigrated from Poland to Palestine, where Tsvi was born in 1935. When conflicts broke out between the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine, the Nussbaum family returned to Poland, settling in Sandomierz in 1939.

   

  By 1942 Tsvi Nussbaum parents had been murdered by the Nazis, and he was brought from Sandomiercz to live with an Aunt and Uncle, in hiding, on the Aryan section of the city.

Read the full article here:http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/boy.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

Copyright 2009 Carmelo Lisciotto  H.E.A.R.T