Liberté Crucifiée, January 9, 2015. Q. Obviously France has been the center of the discussion on the power of cartoons today. What’s it like to see the world coming to the defense of cartoonists and their work? A. Of course I was devastated. The drawing I did on Charlie Hebdo is in the show. It’s a sad drawing. I don’t feel appalled, because it’s written on the wall. It’s the beginning of the World War III. World War I was in the trenches, World War II was in the air, and now we have the Internet and underground terrorism. And there is no way you can uproot that. What happened in Paris was absolutely to be expected, sooner or later. (https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/30/all-in-one-an-interview-with-tomi-ungerer/) Je Suis Charlie Below is an excerpt of what my father, Tomi Ungerer, wrote the day after the Charlie Hebdo murders. It is still a work in progress and no doubt he will have much more to say. Right now though my sense is that he is still too upset to articulate the complexity and depth of his feelings. The feature image [Liberté Crucifiée] shown here is a drawing he made, also the following day and very much off the cuff. We have also included two images that we felt were particularly pertinent to the situation – a poster designed for Reporters Without Borders in 1992 and a drawing of a man running from a pencil attack. We have also included (in French) information about the exhibition that was put together immediately at the Tomi Ungerer Museum in Strasbourg following the murders in Paris. (Aria Ungerer) Tomi Ungerer reacts to the Charlie Hebdo murders: A cold-blooded butchery in Paris, a wanton sacrifice to the altar of loathing. Every bullet shot at my brothers has hit my conscious self – I feel as if I had been killed by proxy. As a child I experienced the fanatic and ruthless rule of a criminal Nazi regime. Thus I dedicated my career to fighting prejudice, injustice, violence and fanaticism and as a consequence of my work, I know how it feels to get anonymous death threats, to be banned and ostracized. I know how anger can degenerate into hatred, which is a contagious disease, a virus with pandemic potentials. I hate hate! We must not succumb to fear and hatred, we must not fall into the trap of generalizations. Why should innocent Muslims pay for atrocities committed by waylaid disciples? We must reassess within ourselves the lessons that can be drawn from the actual and coming events. It is the origin of this rampaging madness that we have to analyze in order to better understand it. We might have to atone and admit that our Western society is at the roots of such desperate behavior. The way it imposed its own set of values, disregarding susceptibility and pride that created such odious reactions. Mutual respect is after all the key to peace and understanding. (Article continues at http://www.tomiungerer.com/je-suis-charlie/ )