I have seen thousands of Holocaust pictures, but this one hit me right in the gut. It is not horrific. It is a little girl smiling, oblivious to the evil that is surrounding her.
She is holding on to a signpost with a sign saying, Verboden voor Joden (Forbidden for Jews). The little girl is Hannelore Cahn. I am not sure if the sign was in a park or a playground, but little Hannelore Cahn was not allowed to go there. A sign with three words stopped her from going any further.
Hannelore Cahn was the daughter of Emil Cahn and Irene Löwenstein. She came to the Netherlands from Cologne in 1939. Hannalore stayed with her two brothers, Kurt and Josef, in the Central Israeli Orphanage in Utrecht. The fact that she went to an orphanage indicated that her parents sent her and her brothers away to a safer place.
That safer place was not safe. Perhaps at first, it was, but as time progressed, it became a dangerous place for a young Jewish girl.
She was born on 31 May 1935 in Wesseling, near Cologne. She was murdered at Auschwitz on 25 October 1944. She reached the age of 9.
Source
History of Sorts 
Leave a comment