Lothar Scholz
(born 1928)

At sixteen Lothar Scholz enlisted in the Wehrmacht and fought on the Eastern Front. After the war he was forced to spy for the Russians, he escaped and was later captured and sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in Siberia. For nine years his whole identity was nothing more than the number ÿ 763. He was forced to work twelve hours a day down a coal mine, with only two days off a year. He was one of the last prisoners of war released in 1955. In this photograph he is wearing his camp jacket with his number emblazoned on it. Lothar wrote two books about his experiences: “Der verratene Idealismus: Ein Junge Im Banne Des Nationalsozialismus” (The Betrayed Idealism: A Boy Fascinated With National Socialism) and “Im Namen von Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin” (In the Name of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin) both are available in German. 

I just finished reading his book. Good god. I do admire that he doesn’t act as though he “knew”. It makes the disappointment all the bigger.