Tomi

Artist and author Tomi Ungerer was eight years old in 1940 when the Nazis crossed the Rhine and marched into his native Alsace, at that time part of France. While the Jewish population and other "undesirables" were deported to southern France, all remaining citizens - men, women, and children - were forced into various branches of the Nazi party. Tomi was conscripted into the Hitler youth, forbidden to speak French, and made to learn German. For the next five years his life would be dominated by Nazi doctrine as the German occupation consumed the lives of the Alsatian people. Before the war…