I need to know this little girls name, I can't find it anywhere and it's haunting me. (WWII)

by CheshireSmiles13

Hey guys, I know this might be a bit of a strange question, but there's this little girl who I've seen two pictures of while researching for a 400 level class on the Holocaust, and I can't find her. I need to know her name, if only to validate her suffering, to acknowledge that she was alive and that she was a person who suffered something unspeakable.

These are the two pictures of her that I have found, I'm hoping someone can help. It doesn't seem important...but I would really like to know.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/0e/16/b9/0e16b946f9a08905c4355a0cfa1a80d7.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/5c/87/72/5c87727e0839323a1264b31e49c3cb0b.jpg

All I know for sure is that these were taken at the Loborgrod concentration camp, I don't have a year, and I don't really know why these pictures would have been taken. Why is she smiling...? Do you think she knows?

To attribute words to this is to oversimplify why I need to know... but these pictures break my heart. Every picture I see of this time period breaks my heart. But it's important to see it, because to turn away from it would be even worse.

Thanks for your help guys.

commiespaceinvader

Sorry /u/ErrantWhimsy and OP, it is not Jeannine Burke. Burke as the link described was a child hidden in Belgium and the only thing that can be said for sure about the girl in the photo is that she is from somewhere in the former Yugoslavia, almost certainly Croatia. This is evident from the "Ž" badge she is wearing, "Ž" standing for "Židov", the Croatian word for Jew.

I have spent the last three days researching this photo and trying to find a name or at least a potential name for the girl in the photo and unfortunately, I must conclude that if it is at all possible finding out who the person is, it would be only with great difficulty and a lot of luck.

Photos are incredible difficult to work with as historical sources, especially when having little to no information where the photo came from. The USHMM for example places the photo in Loborgrod but also notes that "According to recent research this photograph was taken in Auschwitz." I have not been able to get my hands on this recent research and it is possible that it was taken in Auschwitz.

Anyways, Loborgrad was one of the Ustasha's Concentration Camps in Croatia for women and children together with three other ones, Gornja Rijeka, Jastrebarsko, and Stara Gradiška. In existence from 1941 to 1942, Loborgrad was founded after Ante Pavelic of the Ustasha ordered all jews to be arrested after the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. While the Jewish men were mostly brought to the Jasenovac camp, about 1.500 women and children were brought to the Loborgrad castle in October 1941. Guarded and staffed by the fascist organization of ethnic Germans in Croatia, the "Einsatzstaffel", the Loborgrad was erected around the castle. While castle had previously functioned as a old age home, the conditions in the Loborgrad camp became unbearable rather soon, mainly due to overcrowding. With a maximum capacity of 500 to a maximum of 800 people, the 1500 women and children faced horrible conditions there. According to survivor and post-war testimony, sexual violence enacted by the ethnic German guards, and the camp commander, Heger, also ran rampant.

In November 1941, 300 Serbian women were brought from the camp to the near Gornja Rijeka camp but this did not much alleviate the conditions as is evident from the fact that in early 1942 typhus breaks out there. With near 400 cases in February 1942, the camp administration allowed the Jewish community to send doctors and medicine to the camp, especially after Heger's brother, who was his sub-commander of the camp had contracted typhus. Still, until that point 200 of the camp inmates had succumbed to the disease.

In the beginning of August 1942, the camp was handed over to the Germans in Croatia, who promptly began deportations to Auschwitz. In the end of September only 50 inmates were left, 2 of whom were released while the rest was deported to Jasenovac.

The difficulty of identifying the inmates of the Loborgrad camp stems from the fact that the Ustasha was very erratic in their persecutory measures. Often arrests were the result of a local initiative rather than of central planning. Additionally, few records were kept and those that existed of the Loborgrad camp have been largely destroyed, once the German took over but also towards the end of the war.

In the same vein, assuming the photo above was taken in Auschwitz because the girl in question was among those deported there in August of 1942, it is near impossible to identify her. While death books from the Auschwitz Stammlager exist, they only include those imprisoned there and not directly send to the gas chamber in Auschwitz. Seeing as the girl in question is a very young girl, her chances of survival in Auschwitz were virtually zero since it was established policy that only those able to work would be imprisoned in the camp for a while, while women, children, and the elderly fell victim to immediately being gassed after arrival.

From what I can tell from my research, there is sporadic material on the Loborgrad camp from Coratian archives. The USHMM lists material from the Jewish museum of Zagreb, Records of the Yugoslav War Crimes Commission, and records from the Jewish Archive in Belgrad. The last one lists in its finding aid, a List of victims (p. 10, f. 6/1). Now you can request said list be send to you with the USHMM in order to do more research on the possible identity of the girl in photo. Be aware however, that not only is the list most likely in Serbocroatian (possibly Cyrillic letters) but also might include hundreds of female children in the right age range.

Similarly, Yad Vashem also holds several records on Loborgrad, including a list of those who perished there and other records.

Again, with luck, you might be able to find a list of potential names for this girls but I find it highly unlikely that someone would be able to identify her definitively, especially in light of that we are working under the assumption that she indeed was in the Loborgrad camp and deported from there to Auschwitz when it is also possible that she was in one of the other children's concentration camps in Croatia, among other possibilities.

I'm sorry that there isn't more I could do or find. The unfortunate reality is that this girl is one among the thousands and more victims of the Holocaust whose name, story, and live we will probably never know.

Sources:

  • Carl Bethke: Das Frauen- und Kinderkonzentrationslager Loborgrad in Kroatien (1941–1942). In: Jahrbücher für Geschichte und Kultur Südosteuropas. 2008, Jg. 9, S. 127–140.

  • Wolfgang Benz und Barbara Distel - Der Ort des Terrors - Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager - Frauen- und Kinderlager - Loborgrad - Band 9, S. 319.

  • Narcis Lengel-Krizman: Sabirni logori i dječja sabirališta na području sjeverozapadne Hrvatske 1941-1942. In: Sjeverozapadna Hrvatska u NOB-u i socijlističkoj revoluciji, p. 884-889

ErrantWhimsy

Google Reverse Image Search says possibly Jeannine Burke.

http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/data.show.php?di=record&da=survivors&ke=5