The article recounts the story behind a famous World War II photograph taken during the final days of Nazi Germany in April 1945.As Allied forces advanced across Germany, the SS attempted to evacuate prisoners from concentration camps in order to conceal evidence of Nazi crimes.

Between April 6 and April 10, 1945, several trains carrying thousands of Jewish prisoners departed from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp toward the Theresienstadt ghetto in occupied Czechoslovakia.

One of these trains became stranded near Magdeburg after days of travel under horrific conditions, with little food, water, or sanitation available to the prisoners.

Many of the people onboard belonged to Bergen-Belsen’s so-called “exchange” section, where prisoners with foreign citizenship or documents from neutral countries were kept alive as potential bargaining tools by the Nazi regime.Unlike many concentration camp prisoners, they wore civilian clothing instead of striped uniforms.As American forces approached, the SS guards abandoned the train and fled.On April 13, 1945, troops from the U.S.30th Infantry Division and tanks from the 743rd Tank Battalion discovered the stranded prisoners and liberated them.U.S.Army photographer Major Clarence L.Benjamin captured the emotional moment in a photograph that later became one of the most recognized images of Holocaust liberation.The image prominently features a Jewish mother from Makó, Hungary, holding the hand of her young daughter as survivors leave the train.For decades, the identities of the pair were unknown.

In 2017, researchers and journalists from Haaretz identified both individuals, confirming that the daughter survived the war and later returned to Hungary, where she lived into old age.