Daughter of small girl pictured in iconic Holocaust survivor photo sheds new light on image 72 years later

New details have been discovered about the identity of a woman and little girl shown in an iconic picture running from a Jewish prisoner train liberated by American troops during WWII.

Though choosing to remain unidentified, Haaretz confirmed that the little girl, now 77, is still alive and living in Hungary.

She was one of 2,500 prisoners on the train were from Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Greece and Slovakia. They had been in the northern German concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen. It was the same camp at which Anne Frank died during the Holocaust shortly before liberation in 1945.

It began with Matthew Rozell, a history teacher from the US who was researching his book A Train Near Magdeburg: A Teacher’s Journey into the Holocaust and the Reuniting of the Survivors and Liberators, 70 Years On.

Mr Rozell found the picture in the possessions of US Army veteran George Gross, now an English professor at the University of San Diego, who happened to be one of the soldiers in the liberating unit.

Mr Gross had taken a camera on the mission. Haaretz wrote a piece about the picture and a reader in Europe sent an email.

A woman who is only referred to as N said she was the granddaughter of the older woman in the picture. The woman and girl are a mother and daughter from a village in Hungary.

Just days before the camp was liberated trains full of prisoners the Nazis were going to use for prisoner exchanges with Allied troops left the camp and were headed to Theresienstadt, another concentration camp north of Prague, Czech Republic.

The prisoners were freed by American soldiers, received medical care, and many emigrated to British-held Palestine - now Israel.

Some, like N’s mother and grandmother, returned home to Mako, Hungary after the war.

N told Haaretz her grandmother died in the 1980s and that both her grandmother and mother had lifelong “psychological problems” as a result of the trauma from being in a concentration camp.