Piotr Stefanowitsch Korschunkow – “You can only hope that your will and your body will be strong ...”

Piotr Korschunkow and hundreds of other inmates reached the Leipzig-Thekla subcamp in late February 1945. They had come from a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp and been en route for ten days. The young Russian had been taken prisoner of war as a Red Army soldier. Completely enfeebled, he was unable to work in Leipzig. When the SS cleared this camp as well, they locked him and more than 300 other sick inmates in a barrack and set fire to it. With the last of his strength, he managed to escape; more than 200 fellow inmates died in the flames. After a further year in the army, he worked in his home country as a photographer and an artist.