A child at gunpoint

the long version

Richard Raskin provides the first extended consideration of the photo of a young boy with his hands up being driven from the Warsaw ghetto, widely regarded as the most haunting image we have of the Holocaust. He begins by attempting to describe it objectively as a photographic artefact, detailing its components and composition. He then presents a history of how it came about: to illustrate a report that SS General J rgen Stroop compiled in 1943, documenting for Himmler how he had crushed the ghetto uprising that spring. In his subsequent discussion, Raskin draws on the statements of SS officials to shed light on how they experienced their genocidal project, and what the photograph likely meant to those who took it and selected it for the Stroop Report. The next chapter is devoted to the claims made for the identity of the boy with his hands up, as well as for the other captives and the SS man with the machine gun.