Stendal, 1952

...is when this photograph was taken. 
It shows my father at the age of 27. 

He was born in 1925 to a Jewish father and Catholic mother. When this portrait was taken, he had already lived through years in Nazi forced labour camps in occupied France. After he managed to escape from a camp in Normandy, in the chaos just after D-day, he hid in Berlin during  the last months of the war and came home in 1945 to find his mother a widow. His father as well as almost his entire family had been killed in concentration camps.

To support his mother, he started to work at the local theater and opera house while trying to study German and Drama in the remains of Berlin's university.  
The young man in this photo had already given up his studies and worked full-time. He had married his first wife and was father of a little girl (not me, that happened much later). 

My father died in 1999. He would have been 96 today.