And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe?
That's tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers' little boy!
Will he grow up to be an L.L.D.?
Or a tenor in Vienna's Opera House?
Whose teensy hand is this, whose little ear and eye and nose?
Whose tummy full of milk, we just don't know:
printer's, doctor's, merchant's, priest's?
Where will those tootsy-wootsies finally wander?
To a garden, to a school, to an office, to a bride,
Maybe to the Burgermeister's daughter?
Precious little angel, mommy's sunshine, honey bun....
—from "Hitler's First Photograph," by Polish poet
Wislawa Szymborska,
winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize
