I’ve always known that I was different. I like poetry, I think that everyone is a good person, and I’m highly sensitive. I also knew that I was unique, an individual. But I didn’t know that everyone else was so different from me.

Like my dramatic start? No, I’m not some kind of alien or weirdo. But today, during my language arts class, I did notice how different I was from my class and friends. We’re studying the Holocaust, and we were looking at this photo. It is now very famous, and someone wrote a poem about it. This is how the poem goes:

I would like to be an artist
So I could make a Painting of you
Little Polish Boy

Standing with your Little hat on your head
The Star of David on your coat
Standing in the ghetto with your arms up as many Nazi machine guns pointing at you

I would make a monument of you and the world who said nothing

I would like to be a composer so I could write a concerto of you
Little Polish Boy

Standing with your Little hat on your head
The Star of David on your coat Standing in the ghetto with your arms up as many Nazi machine guns pointing at you

I would write a concerto of you and the world who said nothing

I am not an artist
But my mind had painted
a painting of you

Ten Million Miles High is the Painting
so the whole universe can see you Now
Little Polish Boy

Standing with your Little hat
on your head
The Star of David
on your coat
Standing in the ghetto with your arms up as many Nazi machine guns pointing at you

And the World who said nothing

I’ll make this painting so bright
that it will blind the eyes
of the world who saw nothing

Ten billion miles high will be the monument
so the whole universe can remember of you
Little Polish Boy

Standing with your Little hat
on your head
The Star of David
on your coat

Standing in the ghetto
with your arms up
as many Nazi machine guns pointing at you

And the monument will tremble so the blind world
Now will know

What fear is in the darkness

The world
Who said nothing

I am not a composer
but I will write a composition
for five trillion trumpets
so it will blast the ear drums
of this world

The world’s
Who heard nothing

I
am
Sorry
that
It was you
and
Not me.

Everyone in my class said the same thing. When asked what the little boy was feeling, everyone said fear. They all said that he was being completely victimized. I saw differently. Although I did agree with their thoughts, I took it a step further. I thought that the little boy was acting heroic, that he ran away from the crowd of Jewish people, purposely surrendered in front of the Nazis, and silently begged for their mercy. I believed that he was trying to prove how innocent he was, and how he wasn’t harmful at all. I thought that instead of fully consumed by fear, that he also had hope, and was trying to prove that there is good in everyone. I didn’t think that he was just randomly pulled from the crowd and had a gun pointed at him, I thought that he ran from the crowd, and showed bravery and heroism. I thought that that’s what the author of the poem thought as well.

I wish I was there, I wish I knew the story behind that little Polish boy…