The Boy... but not really

 

As others have said about The Boy: A Holocaust Story by Dan Porat, the boy is not really featured in this book at all.  

In this, one of the most famous Holocaust photographs, we do not and probably will never know the identity of the boy.  The same goes for the Jewish people who surround him.  These people were murdered: they might have been dead by the end of that day.

The only definitive identification in the shot is Josef Blosche, behind the boy to the right, who participated in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto.  The photo is part of fifty phots added to Jurgen Stroop’s report of his suppression of the Ghetto Uprising.  Both Blosche and Stroop, may their names be blotted out, were executed for their crimes. 

The book lacks focus.  We learn about other Jewish people who lived in the ghetto at the same time, but they are not related to the boy or the group who surround him.  This causes confusion. This is less a book about the boy and more about the maelstrom of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto.