This is a photograph of an East German soldier helping a young boy cross the newly constructed Berlin Wall on the day it was built.

A boy left behind in the chaos of fleeing people and families stranded on both sides of the border. The soldier is young, and his eyes, which look suspiciously over his shoulder, are filled with fear. And yet he persevered.

Although the soldier had received orders from the East German government not to allow anyone into East Berlin, he helped the boy slip through the barbed wire.

According to reports, the soldier was caught performing this charitable act by his superior officer and removed from his unit.

Hopefully, his sentence was light and he wasn’t imprisoned or shot. Descriptions of this photo come with the caveat that “no one knows what became of him.”

But how did this little boy end up on the other side of the wall from his parents? According to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin, one of the boy’s parents, his father, was with the boy in West Germany visiting relatives while the rest of the boy’s family was at home in the East.

The ban on crossing sectors was introduced overnight, separating the family. The father believed the boy should be raised by his mother, so he let the boy run to the fence, where this soldier lifted him across.

During the night of August 12-13, 1961, police and units of the GDR army began sealing off the border, and by Sunday morning the border with West Berlin was also closed.

East German troops and workers had begun tearing up the roads along the border, making them impassable for most vehicles. They had also erected barbed wire and other fences along a 156-kilometer stretch of the border around the three western sectors and along the 43-kilometer stretch separating West and East Berlin.

The barrier was built within East Berlin, or rather East German territory, to prevent it from extending into West Berlin at any point.

Generally, the Wall ran only slightly inside East Berlin, but in some places it was some distance from the legal border. Later, the original barrier was incorporated into the actual Wall; the first concrete elements and large blocks were installed on August 17.

(Image credit: Checkpoint Charlie Museum / RHP).