Ralph Giordano

The father immigrated from Sicily. Immediately after Adolf Hitler's Nazi takeover at the beginning of 1933, Giordano moved from elementary school to a respected Hamburg high school. Since his mother was Jewish, the child was exposed to anti-Semitic reprisals from teachers and classmates at high school as a result of the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935. Giordano was arrested several times by the Gestapo and badly beaten during interrogations. In 1940 he had to leave high school early. At that time, Giordano began writing a story about his family, which was to be published in novel form in 1982. After the family lost their home in Hamburg as a result of a bomb attack in the summer of 1943, they temporarily moved to Bösdorf in the Altmark. A year later he returned to Hamburg. Shortly before the collapse of National Socialist rule, Giordano's mother was threatened with deportation. A friend from Hamburg then hid the family in a cellar, which saved them from the worst. After the end of the w