This photograph was taken in 1942 in Minsk during the execution of partisans. You can see my friend Masha Bruskina. We became friends before the war when we studied in the Theater Studio. During the German occupation Masha worked at a hospital situated outside of the ghetto. Masha had dyed her hair blond and so managed to get that job, but someone informed the Germans about Masha’s identity (Masha was Jewish and belonged to a partisan group). The Germans arranged a demonstrative execution and hung Masha in one of the Minsk squares. After the war Masha was rehabilitated: she died saving lives.

[Editor’s note: This picture does not belong to Ms. Drapkina’s personal family pictures. Due to the importance to Ms. Drapkina’s life story, we took it from the Bundesarchiv under the creative commons license CC BY-SA 3.0 DE]