Tomi: A Childhood Under the Nazis

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 closed in on them, his close-knit family managed to live a relatively normal life, circumventing whenever possible the Nazi rules and regulations that crept into every corner of their lives. Ever observant, the young Tomi recorded his impressions in drawings, paintings, and diary entries throughout the war and eventual liberation by the Allies, and these form the basis for this unique visual memoir. In addition, rare documents from the era clearly show the Nazi propaganda machine in all its meticulous detail: schoolbooks, posters, postcards, decrees, pamphlets, songbooks, toys, and photographs.