My name is Helga.
I was born in Berlin in 1928. My childhood was peaceful. It was wonderful — until the war. In February 1945 my father was killed in an air raid. A few days later, my house was bombed. My mother and I would have died that day, but we were at my father’s funeral. That month I was accepted to photography school, but I never went. Instead my mother and I fled Berlin to escape the fighting. We went to Hohenschwangau, a Bavarian village where my uncle had a camera shop. I still have my school acceptance letter.