Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story2012

Tomi Ungerer:
February 2nd, 1945. That was the day of the liberation. It was fantastic. It was unbelievable. And then France committed, really, a cultural assassination on us. I suffered just as much under the French as they came back, because to the French we were just like 'dirty Germans.' It was forbidden to say just one word of Alsatian in school. I was fascinated with French literature, but my teacher would say, 'lose your accent before you get interested in literature'. We had this beautiful library with all the German classics, everything; Schiller, Goethe, everything. The French took them all out and burned them. You would never expect the French to come in and burn libraries; no, the Nazis do that! When you're faced with this kind of historical contradiction... what is liberation? What is fascism? What is dictatorial? And this is what I found out as a child very, very early. Everything was just absurd. The war is absurd. People are absurd. The grown-ups are absurd.