Figure 1.--This photograph more than any other has come to represent the Holocaust. The little Jewish boy was arrested in Warsaw in 1943. Somehow he survived. This was unusual as children and the eldely were the first ones the Germans killed at the death camps. His name was Tsvi Nussbaum.

The NAZis did not like photographs taken in the Gettos or the Concentration camps or of the actual killing of the Jews. The Holocaust was, however, conducted on such a vast scale by such enthusiastic NAZIs that many pgotographic images were taken and quite a few survived the War. This photograph more than any other has come to represent the Holocaust. The little Jewish boy was arrested in Warsaw during 1943. By this time, most Polish Jews had already been murdered by the NAIZs, including most of his family. Somehow he survived. This was unusual as children and the eldely were the first ones the Germans killed at the death camps. His name was Tsvi Nussbaum.

Photography

The NAZis did not like photographs taken in the Gettos or the Concentration camps or of the actual killing of the Jews. The Holocaust was, however, conducted on such a vast scale by such enthusiastic NAZIs that many pgotographic images were taken and quite a few survived the War. This photograph more than any other has come to represent the Holocaust.

The Holocaust

The little Jewish boy was arrested in Warsaw during 1943. By this time, most Polish Jews had already been murdered by the NAIZs, including most of his family. Somehow he survived. This was unusual as children and the eldely were the first ones the Germans killed at the death camps.

Eindeutschung

The NAIZs targetted Jewish children and adults with murderous intent. Less well known is that the NAIZs also targeted Polish gentile children. They wanted Polish children with Aryan features for Eindeutschung (Germinaztion). NAZIs considered these children to be stolen genetic property. Badly outnumered in population and unable to significantly increase the German birth rate, the NAZIs saw this as an expedient way of adding to the Aryan population. These concerns were ibcreased as the War began to turned against the NAZIs in late 1941. Many of these children were rounded up in mass and later rejected after a more careful racial examination. The children rejected were usually sent to concentration camps where most died. Hitler thought individuals with Aryan blood in occupied countries were a potential danger to Germany.

Tsvi Nussbaum

The little boy's name was Tsvi Nussbaum and he was 7 years old. Most of us who first saw this photographed assumed that the terrified little Jewish boy was murdered like most Polish Jews. Incredibly he somehow managed to survive. Tsvi C. Nussbaum, came to America after the War and is a physician living in Rockland County, New York. Tsvi and his aunt were arrested in front of a Warsaw hotel. On that day, a group of Jews with foreign passports had gathered to find a way to escape Poland. The date was July 13, 1943. He was told to put his hands up, "I remember there was a soldier in front of me and he ordered me to raise my hands." [Bülow] We also know the identity of the German soldier in the photograph. He was Josef Blösche, a particularly sadistic man. He was known in the Ghetto as "Frankenstein". After the War he attemted to hide his barbaric acts. He was recognized in the Soviet occupation zone. Survivors from the Warsaw Ghetto recognized him. He was put on trial. After conviction of murder he was executed.

Actually Tsvi's family immigrated to Palestine (at the time a British colony) in 1935. But because they found life there very hard at the time, his father made a seerious mistake. He brought the family back to their home town of Sandomierz, Poland, in 1939. Even Jews in 1939 did not fully appreciate the dangers posed by the NAZIs. When the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, Tsvi's parents were murdered before the Jews were rounded up and put in gettos. His brother disappeared meaning it is not known how and where the NAZIs murdered him. Tsvi and his aunt went to Warsaw and because of their appearance managed to live there as gentiles for over a year.

When caught in 1943, Tsvi and his aunt were deported to the Bergen-Belsen POW camp in Germany. Tsvi Nussbaum and his aunt had foreign passports and were thus sent to Bergen-Belsen as exchange Jews (The family had emigrated to Palestine in 1935, but had returned to Sandomierz, Poland, in 1939 just before World War II started.) Bergen-Belsen was a POW not a death camp although large numbers of people died there. The death camps where millions of Jews were killed were located in Poland. It was unusual for Polish Jews to be sent to a camp in Germany rather than one of the camps the Germans built in occupied Poland to carry out the Holocaust. It was Tsvi's foreign passport that saved his life. If Tvsi had been sent to Auschwitz where most of the Warsaw Ghetto Jews were sent, given his age, he would have been murdered within hours. The NAZIs in 1943 established the so-called "residence camp" of Bergen-Belsen on a portion of the site of the prisoner-of-war camp. This enclosure housed several thousand Jewish prisoners under the pretext that they would be exchanged for German nationals held by the western Allies. The NAZIs hoped that such exchanges would facilitate peace negotiations with American and British officials. By July 1944, over 4,000 of these "exchange" Jews were detained in Bergen-Belsen. In December 1944 the Germans redesignated Bergen-Belsen a concentration camp. Few of the Jewish detainees were ever actually exchanged. [Bülow] Tsvi almost died a few days before the camp was liberated in 1945. A German doctor stayed to help him after the SS guards fled.

Nussbaum went to Palestine in 1945 and spent 8 years there during which the state of Israel was created. He came to America in 1953, not speaking more than a few words of English. He was especially good at science. He eventually went to medical school, becoming an ear, nose, and throat specialist, un part because he wanted to help his uncle, who contracted a speech defect because his larynx was damaged in the concentration camps. [Bülow]

Reader Comment

A French reader comments, "What a terrible image of a child, aiming a gun at him! Normaly the human race should protect the children!" This was symbolic of NAZI policy. The children were especially targetted. They were often killed within hours of reaching the death camps.

Sources

Bülow, Louis. E-mail message, October 10, 2002.

Bülow, Louis. Tsvi Nussbaum, accessed October 10, 2002.

Created: October 9, 2002
Last updated: October 9, 2002