The black and white image showing three young girls has been seen in books, newspapers, museums and galleries across the world over the past eight decades.
Taken at London’s Liverpool Street station and first published in The News Chronicle 84 years ago today in 1939, it captures the Jewish youngsters on a life-changing journey as they fled Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport.
But the identities of those three little girls were unknown... until now.
Thanks to BBC podcast The Girls, we now know they are sisters Ruth and Inge Adamecz, and Hanna Cohn, who were waiting to be collected to go to new homes when a press photographer took the now iconic image.
Sadly, only Inge is still alive, aged 89 and living in South London.
It was not that long ago she first saw the photo herself, in the book Never Again: A History of the Holocaust, by historian Martin Gilbert, and realised that she and Ruth, who died in 2015, had been forever immortalised as a moving representation of the Holocaust and Kindertransport.
“I don’t remember the picture being taken or that day at all,” Inge says.
Then just five years old, she had fled her home in Breslau, Germany – now Wroclaw in Poland – with seven-year-old Ruth.
“The only thing I remember from around that time was being upset one night because I had somebody else’s pyjamas on. I was crying and I recall another one of the girls jumping up and down on the bed to make me smile.
“We were very, very lucky to be brought here.”
With Adolf Hitler’s Nazis persecuting Jews, Inge’s father had divorced her mother because she was Jewish and he was Austrian, leaving her with three small children to look after.
Inge and Ruth were among the 10,000 children who left Germany for the UK on the Kindertransport.
But their mother and younger sister Gretel, who was just three, stayed behind in Germany and died at Auschwitz.
Some six million Jews were murdered during the Second World War – including more than 1.5 million children. The sisters started their new lives in Tynemouth, in the North East of England, in July 1939 before being moved to Windermere in Cumbria to keep them safe when the war started.
“I’ve spent my life recognising how lucky I am to be alive – the real tragedy is my mother and younger sister weren’t so lucky and my father divorced her because she was Jewish,” says Inge, who went on to marry and work in advertising.
“I can’t understand why I was smiling in the picture. It did affect Ruth much more than it affected me because she was a much more serious person. Ruth was also older, around seven-and-a-half, I think.
“Maybe I just thought it was an adventure without realising the gravity of the situation.”
Hanna only learned of the photograph when her twin brother Hans – who was sat next to her on that day but did not make the picture – came back from an exhibition at Camden Library to mark 50 years since the Kindertransport and said he recognised her from the picture and the raincoat she was wearing.
Hanna, who died in 2018, was 10 when she was put on the Kindertransport and she spoke to the University of London about the trip.
“I remember going through Holland and kind ladies giving us sticky buns and lemonade,” she said.
“We got to Liverpool Street station on this train from Harwich and I’m such a conformist the seats were upholstered, they weren’t wooden seats, and I was very worried we might be in the first-class by mistake.
“I was also worried we were going to Liverpool Street, as I thought we were going to London and Liverpool was somewhere else.
“We arrived in this great big hall and I was clutching a doll, which I named Evelyn, and this lady came over and said, ‘I’m your aunt Mary’.”
Hanna’s twin daughters Helen and Debbie Singer still remember how their mum, who worked as a teacher, would look at the photo and say: “I wonder who the other two little girls are?”
It was not until January this year that Hanna’s daughters discovered their identity after listening to audio series The Girls: A Holocaust Safe House, which told the forgotten story of a North-East hostel where Inge and Ruth spent part of the war.
“It was Holocaust Memorial Day and a friend of mine sent me a link to the news item on the BBC website,” Helen says. “I thought, ‘Why is she sending me this link,’ and I scrolled down and I saw the picture with Mum and the names of the two other girls, Ruth and Inge.
“We were so excited. I texted Debbie and I said, ‘We’ve found the girls’.”
A few months later, in April, Inge finally met Hanna’s daughters at the Imperial War Museum in London, where the photograph has been on display for more than 20 years, to learn more about both of their families and what happened to them.
The picture was taken by a photographer for Topical News Agency and now belongs to Getty Archives, which has since updated its records so the caption gives the names of all three girls.
“I feel quite tearful, because our mother’s name and where she came from are now attached to this photograph along with Inge and Ruth, and they’re not just nameless children,” Debbie says.
“Inge is this special person in our lives. I think Mum would be really proud of us. She always talked about those two little girls and the fact we’ve found them would be really important to her.”
Helen adds: “They deserved to be named and we think our mother would have been happy about this.
“These were not just ‘three little girls’, they were people who had names and lives that mattered.”
* The Girls: The Holocaust Safe House is available to listen to on BBC Sounds.
