It could be. If I had to decide, I would say the ears are conclusive, and that baby face is so endearing...
WHAT DO YOU THINK:
A snapshot from Benedict's past?
By TIM STONESIFER
The Evening Sun
1/30/2011
HANOVER, Pennsylvania - A color scan of a group of German soldiers and their Hitler Youth helpers from WWII shows one boy, front row on the far left, who bears a strong resemblance to a young Joseph Ratzinger, or Pope Benedict XVI.
[The picture appears to be B&W but the faces and hands have flesh tones, so obviously an inferior color shot.]
The slide is owned by a Hanover-area man, who hopes to confirm whether it s only the second such known slide of Ratzinger in a boy in the Hitler Youth.
[We Benaddicts know, of course, there is another picture which has been used in all Germand Italian documentaries about Benedict XVI since he became Pope - the one below:]
The following comparison shows the Pope, posed and stern in his familiar picture clad in the uniform of the Hitler Youth, and a closer look at the boy in the newly unearthed picture.
That the Pope -- then a skinny German boy named Joseph Ratzinger -- was conscripted to Adolph Hitler's youth movement for a time during the war is now common knowledge. That an image of the young man in Nazi attire exists is well known, too, with that single grainy black-and-white photo held by the Getty Research Institute.
The Vatican and other Catholic officials have for years acknowledged openly,
if perhaps with some reluctance, [What nonsense! when Cardinal Ratzinger himself wrote about it in MILESTONES!] the distant past of their spiritual leader, who was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. The war was a dark time in history, they've said, and that young man soon left the military and soon went on to help countless souls.
The newspaper's caption:A picture of Joseph Ratzinger in the only known black-and-white image from his time in the Hitler Youth is shown next to a close-up view of a young man in a slide owned by David Williams. The comparison shows a number of similarities in the two boys faces, though Williams has been unable to confirm they are a match.
Today, he smiles for pictures, celebrates Mass and blesses more than a billion followers.
And now here's the newly- discovered image -- showing a boy with a grin and a low-slung cap, who looks quite a bit like the first.
This time the boy's posed with comrades, in color, on an old 35 mm slide. Looking close, an anti-aircraft gun in the distance suggests a German flak unit, like the one to which young Ratzinger was conscripted. The hilly terrain suggests the Munich area, where he's known to have served. Again there's the uniform, the right era.
And now, too, there's a sideways grin, an expression that under that old cap seems to hold a hint of the Pope's often asymmetrical
smile. There's the shape of the head, those ears.
So is this the second-known image of the Pontiff during his Nazi conscription, the first ever found in color? That remains to be confirmed.
What's known so far is this: the slide was discovered by a Hanover-area man, David Williams; it came from Germany, after Williams purchased it on eBay in 2009; both Williams and the former editor of a German photography magazine believe that slide shows the Pope.
David Williams began collecting old cameras, photographs and negatives about 30 years ago, he said. A history buff from a young age, Williams' interest was sharpened and focused on old photo memorabilia while he was stationed at an Army base in Germany in the 1970s.
There he would troll the local flea markets and antique shops, and quickly learned of both the Germans' love affair with early color photography before and during World War II, and the resulting glut of images from that era. There were shots of family life, Williams said, of local attractions and architecture.
And of course, through photography, the war was recorded, Williams said, with German soldiers carrying cameras, snapping pictures as they traveled, often with the latest and best equipment.
"The Germans always wanted to create the perfect format," he said, "to make the best pictures."
Williams eventually brought home to Hanover a similar passion for those excellent early images -- and quite a collection of them.
And from there his hobby only grew. A scientist and researcher by day, Williams nonetheless spent years of evenings and weekends looking in local shops and scouring the Internet for finds. Along the way he sold some to collectors, and had more than a few old and unique slides published in photography magazines.
You just develop an eye for the unusual after a while, Williams said.
So maybe that's what it was, on a fall night in 2009, when that image of a Luftwaffe Flak unit popped up on Williams' computer monitor. He saw it was war-era, he said, saw it was a German anti-aircraft unit, that it was a color slide. A nice piece, he said.
It was being sold from Germany for about 5 euros, he said, or around $7. So why not?
Holding that slide in his hand, Williams said it was actually a few weeks later -- the slide scanned and stowed in his large collection -- when he happened across a picture of the Pope, of Joseph Ratzinger. And something clicked.
From there Williams found online the only existing picture of the young Ratzinger, currently held by the Getty Research Institute, showing him in the attire of the Hitler Youth.
"I looked at the two side-by-side," he said, "and they looked awfully, awfully close."
Ulrich Vogt is a retired German school teacher and former editor of a respected photography magazine, who today lives in a town of grand cathedrals and museums, where Charlemagne was once crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III. From that historic town of Paderborn, he's written a dozen books on varying subjects, and a score of scholarly articles on German photography. He has a small photo collection of his own, and has long studied old photographs and cameras.
He met Dave Williams collecting online a few years ago, and he's seen the scans of Williams' slide.
"It is the Pope as a young German 'Flakhelfer,'" Vogt said via e-mail. There's no doubt, he said.
Yet when Williams and Vogt -- an ocean apart but the common goal of verifying the slide between them -- began the search in 2009 to have the image authenticated, they ran into a brick wall spanning two continents.
Vogt said he approached countless German newspapers and several photo agencies, but all were unwilling to publish a story or help authenticate the slide. It's a shame, he said, because placing the photo in a nearby Bavarian newspaper would be the best way to confirm the presence of Ratzinger and the other soldiers shown.
[It is surprising why! Especially as the earlier group photo has been widely used. And how is it that neither Vogt nor Williams seem to be aware of that earlier photo?]
"But I think especially the Bavarian newspapers of the region where Ratzinger grew up and where he studied, was priest, bishop and cardinal are very careful to make no mistake, because the Pope is a German and has been a German soldier," Vogt said. "That's high-explosive."
[Isn't Vogt being melodramatic? There's nothing touchy at all about that part of Joseph Ratzinger's life - it happened, and not because he volunteered or supported the Nazis in any way! Only malicious people like some British media continue to mention that time of his life with obviously unfounded innuendo.]
Closer to home, Williams was faring no better with preservationists and historians.
Williams send e-mails or made calls to the Vatican, the Bundesarchiv in Germany, the German Historical Museum, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Imperial War Museum in England, researchers at Christie's Fine Art Auctions and producers of the television show "History Detectives."
"It was mostly all the same," he said. "Sort of cordial brush-offs."
Still, Williams said, he's not given up trying to get an answer, recently renewing his inquiry with the Vatican, even asking that the holy father himself look at the image, if only to finally confirm or deny he's standing there in that war-torn field.
"I guess I'm like a terrier with a bone," Williams said. "I'm a scientist by training, and ultimately I want the truth."
According to Volker Dahm, director of Nazi-era research for Munich's Institute for Contemporary History, some 80 to 90 percent of Germans joined the Hitler Youth during the war, and refusing to sign up could mean being sent to a youth "re-education camp," akin to a concentration camp.
"You could try to avoid it but it was very, very difficult," Dahm said.
Indeed, in his memoirs, the ope wrote of being enrolled in the movement against his will in 1941, when he was 14 and membership was compulsory. He says he was soon let out because of his studies for the priesthood.
Two years later, at age 16, Ratzinger was drafted into an anti-aircraft unit as a helper, a common fate for teenage boys too young to be soldiers. Ratzinger was assigned to a BMW plant and later an aircraft factory at Oberpfaffenhofen, where the first German jet fighters were produced.
Ratzinger was then drafted into the Army in December 1944 and stationed near Traunstein. But with the German army collapsing, he deserted in April or May of 1945 -- he said in his memoirs he can't remember -- only to then be stopped and questioned on the way home under a train overpass by two soldiers.
But those men, Ratzinger writes, "were ones who, thank God, had had enough of war."
So is there a wall of silence today about the pope's service? Some grand conspiracy to keep knowledge of darker hours repressed? [Pish and piffle! They just have not asked the right people. Have they tried going to Bayerische Rundfunk for instance, which, I believe, first came out with the group photo we are familiar with? Or has someone taken the trouble to go to Regensburg and ask Mons. Georg???? Or perhaps, the simplest of all - e-mail the photo to Fr. Lombardi or Georg Gaenswein and ask them to have the Pope himself look at it. Meanwhile, have it analyzed by those digital specialists on photo authentication who can compare the two photos to each other and against an array of other JR photographs that will establish ID points that can lead to a conclusion....]
Probably not, Williams said this week, with Ratzinger's childhood already well known, his place in history since secure.
[The rest of the story is an exercise in unnecessary. almost abusrd speculation!]
Still, Williams said, it's easy to understand why many people would rather see the slide go away, along with the history it might help chronicle. There's certainly an argument to be made that such things are better left forgotten, he said.
Yet Williams remains convinced -- and has faith, he said -- that if word of the picture gets out, particularly somehow to the Pope himself, the mystery would quickly be solved. That slide in Williams' Conewago Township home is a snapshot of people's lives, he said, the lives of young German boys who were fighting for their country, and who'd want to remember where they came from.
A practicing Lutheran, Williams said he has great respect both for the Catholic faith and for Pope Benedict, and can't help but believe a better understanding of the past, even its darkest corners, can only help everyone. And he thinks Pope Benedict would feel the same.
"The Pope, I know, is a man of history-- past, present and future," he said. "And I just want a chance. If (the pope) wanted this slide, I would give it to him."
According to the Vatican's news service, Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled, as always, for a busy week. He'll celebrate the vespers for the Day of Consecrated Life, encouraging followers who make the pilgrimage to Rome to renew their commitment.
Dave Williams' week, too, looks tight. There's work and a long commute to Frederick, Md., where he spends each day as a scientist with a government subcontractor for the National Cancer Institute. Maybe a fun find on eBay one night, or relic hunting with a metal detector around Gettysburg for Civil War artifacts, he said.
Yet it's already known the two men's schedules will cross at least once - next weekend.
The Pope will be celebrating Holy Mass and the Rite of Episcopal Ordination, according to the Vatican's information service. A few hours later, Dave Williams will slide with his family onto a smooth wooden pew in an old Lutheran church in Hanover.
And sometime in that span, for a few seconds, both men will close their eyes, clasp their hands, and offer a prayer to the God they've long loved.
A God who watched Joseph Ratzinger grow into the leader of billions, and who saw Dave Williams safely through the births of two beautiful children. A God who's silently witnessed wars, and waste, and white smoke wafting over Rome.
A God who watches as His people tear one another apart, Dave Williams said, but who still, sometimes, brings them together.
Mr. Stonesifer's heart is obviously in the right place, but he was a tad too melodramatic in parts of this story.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/01/2011 22:36]