Tsvi Nussbaum, the survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Tsvi Chaim Nussbaum (October 31, 1935 –age 76- July 2, 2012) was a Holocaust survivor, known as possibly being the boy in a famous photograph of the Warsaw Ghetto
That cap, the big buttoned jacket, the raised socks. But especially the defenseless hands and the anxious eyes. You almost see them tremble. A terrified child who does not understand what the big people around him are doing. The woman next to him looks at the SS man who seems to be posing with his half-pointed weapon. Maybe the woman recognizes him. He is called Josef Blösche,
a notorious sadist. After the war it became known that he had murdered dozens of Jewish women and children along with a criminal companion, who had the nickname “Frankenstein”. For his crimes, Blösche was arrested in 1967 in the former GDR. He was executed two years later.on 29-07-1969, age 57.
Nussbaum’s parents immigrated to The British Mandate of Palestine in 1935. However, they found life too difficult there, and so returned in 1939 to Sandomierz in Poland. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939 Nussbaum’s mother and father were murdered before the Jews of the region were sent to various German Nazi concentration camps. Tsvi’s brother disappeared, never to be seen again. Shortly thereafter Tsvi, his aunt and uncle along with his first cousins’ Aaron and Mark Nussbaum and their mother Regina moved to Warsaw and, posing as gentiles, lived there for over a year. When caught, they were deported to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.
For a long time it was thought that he – like most of the photo – had been taken to a concentration camp and gassed there. But a miracle happened. A German doctor saved the starving child, who later, after wandering, would become a respected ear, nose and throat doctor in the United States.
After 1945, Tsvi moved to The British Mandate of Palestine. After living in Israel for eight years, he moved to the United States. Initially, he did not speak English; but having a talent for science, he later studied medicine and became an otolaryngologit in New York City.
After the war the photograph appeared in files, exhibitions, magazines, books, newspaper articles on the Holocaust and television documentary programs. And millions of people were brought to believe that the frightened little boy of this poignant photograph was murdered, too. As Washington Post commented: The photograph goes right to the heart – no doubt the boy, like millions of other Jews, were killed by the Nazis ..
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