Boy An Icon For Childhoods Lost In Holocaust ..

Boy An Icon For Childhoods Lost In Holocaust : NPR
Hill and Wang



November 27, 2010
The look of terror and confusion blankets a young boy's face as he raises his arms in surrender to a German soldier pointing a gun at him.
The image, captured in a photograph during World War II, has been seared into the minds and souls of millions since it was seen. But the identity of the little boy — his thin, fragile legs visible beneath a long coat — remains unknown.
And as historian Dan Porat tells Scott Simon, his name will likely never be known.
"The only thing we can say definitely about [the little boy] is that he is in all likelihood younger than 10 years old, because he doesn't have a Star of David on his clothing," says Porat, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Porat took a deep look at the photo for a new book, The Boy: A Holocaust Story. In it, he tries to uncover what happened to the boy, the soldier who pointed the gun, the man who took the photograph and the history of others involved in the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto.