A photo of three young Jewish girls fleeing Germany during World War II in 1939 has puzzled people for more than 80 years. The image has appeared widely, in museums, publications and exhibitions, but so far the identity of the girls has remained a mystery. Until today, but in the news BBC the case is reported.
Inge Adamecz was five years old when the photo was taken at Liverpool Street station in London, UK. She had fled her home in Breslau, Germany, now Wroclaw, Poland, with her ten-year-old sister Ruth. Their mother and younger sister remained and were murdered in Auschwitz, the Nazi extermination camp. Inge doesn’t remember the photo and didn’t know it for decades, until she came across the photo of herself and her sister in Never Again, a book by historian Martin Gilbert. Ruth passed away in 2015.
Sisters Gretel, Ruth and Inge
“It was very surprising. I wrote to the author and told him that I was alive. People compared me to child star Shirley Temple and asked me why I smiled so widely on the photo. You see Ruth, she’s sorry about what happened,” says Inge, who says she doesn’t know the identity of the girl holding the doll in the photo, which has been used as a kind of symbol of the ‘Holocaust and Kindertransport. , the mass transport of Jewish children from Nazi Germany in 1939. Inge, now 89 and living in south London, waited more than 80 years to learn the name of the girl who allowed her to play with her doll.
The girl with the doll was 10-year-old Hanna Cohn, who came on the same train as the sisters, with her twin brother Hans, later called Gerald, from Halle, Germany. In the photo you can see the brother’s pants on the far right. Hanna, who died in 2018, said in a University of London interview that she didn’t remember the photo shoot, but she did remember the trip and the doll.
The image board of the photograph is on file with Getty Images
“I remember walking through Holland and nice women giving us sticky buns and lemonade.
We arrived at Liverpool Street station on this train from Harwich and I remember the seats were upholstered not wooden and I was very concerned that I had been put in first class by mistake. I was also afraid we were going to Liverpool Street, as I thought we were going to London and Liverpool was somewhere else. Then we came to this big room and I remember hugging my doll, Evelyn.”
Hanna first became aware of the film after her brother saw it at an exhibition at London’s Camden Library to mark the 50th anniversary of Kindertransport. Hanna says her twin daughters, Debbie and Helen Singer, were always curious to find out who the other two girls in the photo were.
Hanna Cohn died in 2018.
In January this year, more than 80 years after the film was made, her daughters discovered the truth after discovering a series of BBC podcasts. Our story, The Girls: A Holocaust Safe House, told the story of an inn where sisters Inge and Ruth had stayed during the war.
“It was Holocaust Remembrance Day and a friend sent me a link to the story on the BBC website,” Helen said. “I was like, ‘Why is she sending me this link’ and I scrolled down and saw my mum’s picture and the names of two other daughters, Ruth and Inge.
“We were so excited. I texted Debbie and said, ‘We found the girls’.”
Inge met Hanna’s daughters, Helen and Debbie, in January.
In April, Inge met Hanna’s daughters at the Imperial War Museum in London, where the photo has been on display for over 20 years, to find out more about their families and what happened after the shooting. the picture.
“Inge is that special person in our lives. I think mum would be really proud of us,” Debbie said.
Who is the photographer who took this famous photo?
According to the Getty Images Hulton Archive, his name is known to be Stephenson and he worked for the Topical news agency, which employed more than 1,000 photographers who supplied images to the news industry. In a diary recording his work, the day July 5, 1939 is marked “Three little children waiting at Liverpool Street station”, with the name of the photographer Stephenson in the margin.
It is probably the Scotsman John F Stevenson and with the help of the Scottish Archives we have managed to trace his family.
Photographer John F. Stevenson
“We knew he had taken pictures all his life and we have a lot of his pictures. We knew that was a big part of his life. But it was still in his later years, so this revelation of a quite a diverse career in the late 1930s surprised us, always a wonder. We knew nothing of his photographic career south of the border. So discovering a story like this that we knew nothing about was a real eye-opener and we still wonder if it was him, but it’s just wonderful,” says his grandson, journalist Gordon Stevenson, fascinated by the story of his grandfather’s career as a freelance newspaper photographer. in the late 1930s.
Journalist Gordon Stevenson
The photograph appeared in the national newspaper The News Chronicle the day after it was taken, but was only used occasionally until the digital age, when it appeared with increasing frequency in newspapers and exhibits .
The Getty Archives have now updated their files so that the caption accompanying the photo includes the names of the three girls.
“I think it’s great that our mother’s name and where she’s from is finally in the picture, with Inge and Ruth and they’re not just nameless kids,” Debbie said.
Helen echoes her sister’s words: “They weren’t just ‘three little girls’, they were people who had names and lives that mattered. They deserve to be named and we think our mum would have been happy with that.”
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