The boy in the picture
The image of a boy with his hands in the air in the Warsaw Ghetto with a German pointing a gun at him is the most iconic image of the Holocaust. An Israeli academic has researched the photo and published his results in a book.
Dan Porat
???
Dr Dan Porat is visiting Australia from his native Israel where he is an Associate Professor of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He will participate in the Sydney Jewish Writers’ Festival later this month and will give lectures in various venues before the event.
His book, “The Boy: A Holocaust Story” will be the subject of most of his talks.
J-Wire has gone Face to Face with J-Wire which has decided not to give too much away about his book….
Watch the interview…
Dan Porat will talk this evening at the North Shore Temple Emanuel. For information on the Sydney Jewish Writers’ Festival click here.
There more to learn about the other characters in the book including one nicknamed ‘Frankenstein’ at Encounters@Shalom. For details click here
He is also speaking in Melbourne at Monash University…
Very worthwhile to hear Dan Porat speaking to this subject. Yes, once having seen this photograph of the little boy rounded up in the Warsaw Ghetto, it’s imprinted graphically in the mind’s eye, and we are forever reminded of the atrocity, the incomprehensibility, of the Holocaust. I have another photograph imprinted on my mind, and in my heart, and that is one of a Jewish woman half-turned, shielding the small child she is holding, as the Ukrainian soldier is about to shoot. This is also ‘iconic’ and well known, I think. Her half-turned back speaks volumes.
In the picture, but not visible, there is also a young girl her hands also in the air, her face full of horror and uncertainty.
Iconic it is, in both instances, so much so I hid the book from myself and can no longer find it.