Boy with Hands Raised
Suggested Teaching Instructions
About the photograph: In the best-known photograph taken during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, a boy holds his hands over his head while SS-Rottenführer Josef Blösche 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 and deported to Majdanek extermination camp or Treblinka. 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, as well as all Jewish victims. The original caption was “Forcibly pulled out of bunkers.” This image is part of the Stroop Report, a Nazi propaganda document detailing the suppression of the uprising.
SUMMARY
Examining a photograph of a crowd of people being herded off by German soldiers, the speaker of the poem reflects on the thoughts and feelings of the young boy at the center of the picture. The speaker eulogizes the boy’s martyrdom at the hands of the Nazis.
About the Poet: Yala Korwin (1933–2014) was a Polish-born Holocaust survivor, poet, artist, and writer. Born in Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), she experienced the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust as a young girl. She survived the Lvov Ghetto and later endured imprisonment in concentration camps, including Bergen-Belsen. After the war, Korwin emigrated to the United States, where she pursued a career in writing and art. Her work reflects her experiences during the Holocaust and her reflections on human suffering, resilience, and memory.