The battle of the Warsaw Ghetto continues

25th April 1943: An iconic image illustrates the terror that the Jews face in the Warsaw ghetto as the uprising continues

The ‘Warsaw Ghetto boy’, an image that has become widely recognised as representative of the Holocaust, not just the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

“SS vs. Jews, perpetrators vs. victims, military vs. civilians, power vs. helplessness, threatening hands on weapons vs. empty hands raised in surrender, steel helmets vs bare-headedness or soft caps, smugness vs. fear, security vs. doom, men vs. women and children.”

I have looked at the given photograph. Concerning the person in the SS uniform, standing in the foreground of a group of SS members and holding a sub-machine gun in firing position and wearing a steel helmet with motorcycle goggles, this is me.

The picture shows that I, as a member of the Gestapo office in the Warsaw Ghetto, together with a group of SS members, am driving a large number of Jewish citizens out from a house. The group of Jewish citizens is comprised predominantly of children, women and old people, driven out of a house through a gateway, with their arms raised.

The Jewish citizens were then led to the so-called Umschlagplatz, from which they were transported to the extermination camp Treblinka.

The statement of Josef Blösche at his trial in East Germany in 1969.