Credit to the photographer, Gerald Waller.
The picture was first published in LIFE magazine on December 30, 1946 (page 22 and again on September 24, 1951 (page 180). It had the following captions:
1946
Werfel, a 6-year old Austrian orphan, beams with unbounded joy as he clasps a new pair of shoes presented to him by the American Red Cross.
and
1951
This is Werfel, six-year-old Austrian orphan, hugging a new pair of shoes from America. For nearly five years LIFE reader Mrs. Richard Henry Wehmeyer kept this picture as a visual object lesson. "Every time I heard some petty complaint," she says, she told friends about the little boy with the new shoes, unfolded the clipping to show them.
As Mrs. Wehmeyer said in her letter "This picture of a child's ecstasy over a pair of shoes has meant something personal to me for a long time." It is a special attribute of the photograph that it lasts so long - in a treasured clipping, and in the memory.
