My Grandma’s brother, Victor, was taken prisoner during the Great Patriotic War. As far as I remember from my Grandma’s stories, he was in a concentration camp for a long time. At the time when the camp inmates were liberated by the army, he was in line for a furnace. I remember those terrible words, “I stood the seventeenth to the furnace.”

Upon his return, he was sent in transit to Siberia, and only from there was able to write to his relatives. All this time they sent inquiries to find out if he was alive, but the answer was the same: “Missing in action.”

Later, in Siberia he married a teacher and they had children.

I know from my Grandma that Victor was very creative. Once he made a radio out of improvised materials and parts. Also, at that time he was fond of photography. Victor is the author of this photo. It is a self-portrait taken on film: if you look closely, the person standing to the right and to the left of the tree is the same, he himself