subject: Conversation with Professor Dan Porat, author of "The Boy: A Holocaust Story" [print this page] Conversation with Professor Dan Porat, author of "The Boy: A Holocaust Story"
Conversation with Professor Dan Porat, Author of The Boy: A Holocaust Story, with permission of the publisher.
Writer's Note For the sake of clarity, Irefer to the author mostly in the third person as "Professor Porat". When we spoke in dialogue, I addressed him as "Dan". I would additionally point out that this piece is more accurately described as "a conversation with the author" rather than a "book review" because I had not yet received my publicist's copy by the time the author and I agreed to meet.
It has long been an ambition of mine to interview an authorwho had written an important book. Well, my wish finally came true. I am seated across from Professor Dan Porat, author of The Boy: A Holocaust Story.
Professor Porat, an associate professor of education at Hebrew University, does not consider himself a Holocaust historianbut remarked"I guess I'm becoming one,"as we sat down to begin what quickly became a fascinating interview.
"I want my book to be read as a story rather than just another academic history,"-an important distinction for a man who emphasized his belief that every man is inherently capable of evil. "I could have done many of these same things," Professor Porat freely admitted although without any further elaboration.
I was stunned by his candor. As true as the old adage remains that "a picture is worth a thousand words", Professor Porat reminded me of its important corollary-we mustn't presume to understand the depth of a photograph's meaning without first undertaking an examination of the story behind the image. Professor Porat has done justthat.
I had long wondered about the identity of "the boy" and presumed that Professor Porat had not only discovered it but would share it with me. I approached the day of the interview with child-like expectation.
"I don't know his name," Professor Porat admitted. "His true identity remains unknown."
I hope I did not appear too crestfallen, but truth be told I was saddened to learn "the boy" would remain nameless, butthe diappointmenthelped me to understand that thescope of the book went beyond the discovery of one boy's name.
"Here now, take a close look at the photo," Professor Porat said, clicking through his photo gallery around which he had fashioned an excellent presentation. "The boy is in the foreground of the picture with his hands held up as a sign of surrender, his eyes reflecting his raw proximity to terror. While it is understandable that our attention is drawn to him, is he any more or less important than the other Jews in the background, children and adults? How differently might we have viewed the photograph had "the boy" been in the background?"
Professor Porat spoke with the passion of a defense counsel pleading his case before ajury.
"There are, interestingly enough, several individuals who claim to be "the boy". Dr. Tzvi Nussbaum is an interesting case in point because his claim puts him at a different place than where "the boy" was when the photograph was taken.
"Dan, how does a grown man point a rifle at a child one day and look at himself in the mirror the next? Do we know his name?" I asked, aware of the vindictive tone in my voice while pointing to the German SS soldier standing behind "the boy", his rifle at the ready.
"Ah, that is Josef Blosche, the first of three Nazis whose story is woven into the fabric of the human drama behind the photograph."
I couldn't stop thinking about it. "The boy", nameless, the tormentor, if not the murderer himself, named Josef Blosche, but there was a time not too long before when "the boy" had had a name, given him by his parents on the occasion of his "brit milah".His anonymity places him on a higher plane of tragedy because of the impossibility of disentangling the bodies of Jews whose lives Josef Blosche stole without remorse or acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Yet, we know his name. The obscene unfairness of that rankles me.
"Remember Josef Blosche doesn't judge his actions as we do," Professor Porat explained, in response to my earlier question about how men such asBlosche can participate in horrendous crimes one day and wake up the next as if nothing untoward had happened. "He acknowledges no wrong in doing what he did-whetherit behis first involvement in a mass execution of Russians as part of "Einsatzgruppen B" in 1941 or the following year when he was assigned to the Warsaw Ghetto."
"but in his heart, he "
"Alan, I cannot speak to what is in his heart, but I can tell you these men are not monsters," he emphatically pointed out. "They are regular men, like you and me. Well, most of them are, that is. See this?" he asked, pointing to a photo collage of Josef Blosche before the war alongside Hannah whom he later married.
"A very handsome couple," I remarked, still unable to fathom how regular folks can become killers, do their job seemingly effortlessly and then return home after the war is over, as if "murderer" were just another military job like being a "cook" or "clerk".
"In fact, the captive Jewish populace dubbed Blosche and a fellow SS comrade "Frankenstein" because they would regularly travel through the streets of Jewish Warsaw shooting pregnant women and children at random, just for the seeming sport of it. So I guess it's not disturbing," Professor Porat continued, "to learn that he was involved in some bizarre mine shaft accident after the war, which left his formerly handsome face horribly disfigured."
Bloschelived a relatively normal life until the ''Stazi" (East German secret police) arrested him in 1967, but not before he had married Hannah and together had three children.Despite the fact he was no longer the same handsome fellow he had once been, she regarded him as a good and decent man, according to a letter she wrotein his defense.
Charged with war crimes and put on "show trial" (the expression used by Professor Porat to characterize the East German court that tried Blosche), Blosche admitted it had been he standing behind the little boy after having been shown the photograph. He was found guilty and executed by firing squad, his body cremated.
If not for Franz Konrad, Blosche's superior officer who is said to have been the man behind the camera,there may have never been a photograph of "the boy" or the sordid tale to which it gave rise.
Konrad served as administrator of confiscated Jewish personal property in the Warsaw Ghetto and adjutant to Jurgen Stroop, commander of German forces assigned to liquidate the Ghetto. Konrad was a man on the make who had been arrested before the war, charged with theft and jailed for three months. Local SS members supported his family during his imprisonment for which Konrad felt thankful. His recruitment into the SS followed soon thereafter.
"You know, Dan, it seems so many of these "Blosches and Konrads" were frustrated little men, nothings in society, the very sort of men who became prime candidates for SS recruitment."
"I don't disagree but a man like Stroop was an ideologue whereas Konrad was driven by the desire to make a lot of money from the war. Konrad was even said to possess a pair of Hitler's pants which he planned to sell for a great deal of money after the war.
The third German of this unholy trinity was no less than SS Major General Jurgen Stroop. Assigned by Heinrich Himmler to oversee the final liquidation of the ghetto in Warsaw. Stroop, who included the original print of the photograph in the official report of the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto to his superiors, was driven by two interrelated goals: 1) to degrade the Jews, 2) to ascend to higher levels of the SS hierarchy. But as often happens, Konrad did not get the chance to sell his pair of Hitler's pants and Stroop's failure to wipe out the Ghetto within a matter of days, due to the intrepid courage of the fighting Jews: men, women and children in the 1943 uprising, probably did not sit well with his bosses in Berlin. In any case, he and Konrad were found guilty of war crimes by Polish courts and executed by hanging in 1952.
My interview of Professor Dan Porat ended after an hour and forty minutes, but I am certain we could have continued on for several hours.
"My head is spinning Dan," I remarked after learning more about the complex human story behind one of the twentieth century's most infamous photographs than I could ever have imagined.
I drove home thinking how right Professor Porat was in saying "the boy" was no more or less important than any of the other Jews in the photograph. Our eyes are drawn to him because he happens to be in the foreground. What of the others alongside or behind him?Theyremain as unidentified as he.
"The boy" is really "a child", one of anywhere between1,000,000 to 1,500,000Jewish children murdered by men who, in many cases, went home after the war, kissed their wives and children, read them bedtime stories and lay down to sleepfor the night.
