25/05/2023
Original photograph: Sinaida Grussman, 1945, Kloster Indersdorf by Charles Haacker
I stumbled across images taken at Kloster Indersdorf whilst looking for photographs of people holding signs. I'm interested in the different ways that artists and photographers have incorporated handheld signs into their work and to what ends. This was one of the most heart-breaking set of images I found.
In 1945, a former convent near Dachau named Kloster Indersdorf became a temporary home for hundreds of displaced children after World War II. To help locate relatives, a photograph was taken of each child to be circulated in search notices. The photographer, an American called Charles Haacker, stood each child in front of a simple bedsheet backdrop. Many of the children had changed markedly during the war, and so including their names was to help locate family members who may no longer recognise them. Some had even lost their names.
If you are interested in these photographs, there was an exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Heritage back in 2018 and you can see more of the archive and read the biographies and backgrounds of some of the children in the online exhibition catalogue.
https://mjhnyc.org/exhibitions/my-name-is/
And the girl in the picture… Sinaida Grussman arrived at Kloster Indersdorf in August of 1945. She spoke only a few words of Romanian and Lithuanian and her short stature led staff to believe she was born around 1937. After developing a trusting relationship with a Latvian teacher who was herself a displaced person, Sinaida revealed that she spoke Latvian at home and that her family had relocated to Russia during the war. The teacher learned that Sinaida last saw her father when he joined the army, and that her sister was dead. No one at the children’s center was able to confirm Sinaida’s religion or nationality. Shortly after this picture was taken in October 1945, Sinaida was sent to England.
