AND THEN WE FOUND HOME
2020-Ongoing



My mother (center), Germany, Zwickau, 1987











Canh Bao Thu Le was 14 when he fled South Vietnam with his uncle, father and older sister in 1982 and was rescued by the Cap Anamur. His father served in the South Vietnamese navy before 1975 and was in a re-education camp in Vietnam for six years after the end of the war. His father was killed in a brutal pirate attack at sea. After long stays in refugee camps on Palawan and Bataan and a lengthy approval process, Le came to Germany. He graduated from high school and then studied electrical engineering. Today he lives with his family in Reutlingen and works at Porsche.



Left: Medical certificate  to travel, Philippines, Manila, 1983 / right: Refugee documents, 1982

















Cao Thai Pham (2nd from left) was held in a re-education camp in South Vietnam for nine months after the Vietnam War and fled as an unaccompanied teenager at the age of 14 with 58 people on a small boat, eight days at sea. A Japanese ship rescued them and Pham spent three years in a refugee camp on the Indonesian Galang Island before coming to Germany at the age of 17. 

Peter Ha (left) fled with his daughter Suong Pham at the same time and lived in the Philippines for almost a year. The Pham family has lived in Germany for almost 40 years.

















Cao Thai Pham playing tennis in the cellar






FC Bad Neustadt, Cao Thai Pham (2nd from right, standing) with his former Vietnamese soccer team, Bavaria, 1986


























My father in the accommodation for contract workers, Germany, Ludwigsfelde, 1989





"I've been here for a year and two months [...] and I'm not going back."
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