In fact Smoktunovsky was not a Holocaust survivor: he was captured as a soldier wounded in the war, but as he got better he escaped from the German camp., back to the partisans and then he went back into the war. Of course he was very young: only 17-18 when this happened, and became a real actor just in the 1950-s. He was the son of a Russian Jewish family (had Polish roots), and when he was young he wanted to become a film-technician: his career was cut because of the war. After the war he decided to become an actor, but he wasn't able to finish the actor's school: he got actor's jobs in the cities of the Caucasus, where his colleagues taught him how to act, and encouraged him to go to Leningrad and find a job as an actor. He went there into a film-studio, and very hardly but fortunately got a job in the Lenfilm's theatre. The rest is history: he got most of the roles what all actors just dream of but he didn't get conceited. He just humbly served his public till the end of his life.
Review of Hamlet
