What image opened your eyes to human rights?

[This post is part of the "What image opened your eyes to human rights?" campaign by WITNESS, initiated to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10. Visit their website to find out how you can participate.]

When I was 12, my grandfather gave me a Time-Life book on World War II--you know the variety, coffee-table sized (but kept off the coffee table in favor of a book on Monet), glossy pages and big pictures, the kind you'll never really read because it's simply too cumbersome to carry around.

As I hold it now, the book still smells faintly of smoke, after surviving a house fire over a decade ago.

In the middle of the book, inserted unceremoniously between "Assault on Russia" and "Rising Sun in the Pacific," is a 20-page pictorial on The Holocaust--the gravitas of which is distinguished by its black pages, forming a notable sliver in the midst of white when the book is closed. The large photographs are accompanied by only the most minimalist of explanatory text. Most pages have no words at all. The section opens with this image:

(In the book, the image continues on the right, showing villagers digging a grave. I've thus far been unable to find the complete image online.)

I spent hours laying awake at night staring at the photos, but was haunted by this one in particular. The juxtaposition of the firm, steady man, pointing his gun so determinately at the woman as she huddles over her child, perhaps trying to shield him from his own fate...

I wondered--and still wonder--who is the woman in the photo? What thoughts are passing through her mind, as she stands clutching her child, knowing that within seconds both their lives will end? Is she crying? Is she praying, as she watches her fellow villagers dig her grave in front of her?

And who is the man, who stands so resolutely, and so close to the mother and child whose lives he is about to steal? What thoughts are passing through his mind?

And who is holding the camera?

It's easy, with genocide, to get lost in the numbers. Hundreds of thousands here, millions there--the statistics blur their own meaning, and create another degree of seperation from the horror of the act they represent.

This image is more than the depiction of cold-blooded murder. This isn't the anonymous machinations of a bureaucratic totalitarian state--this is a man, a woman, and a child.

If he took one step closer, he could touch her.