Mulisch, Harry

The Dutch author Harry Mulisch was born in the city of Haarlem. His father came from Austria, an officer who had fled to the Netherlands after the First World War, and his mother was a Belgian Jewess, born in Antwerp. When the Germans took the Netherlands during the Second World War, his father sided with the Germans. Harry Mulisch had, to say the least, an unusual childhood as the child of a Nazi collaborator and a Jewess. The parents separated, but the father saved both his ex-wife and his son from death in a German concentration camp. "I have not experienced the Second World War, I AM the Second World War", Mulisch has stated. He lived with his father and attended Christelijk Lyceum in Haarlem, but never obtained a diploma. After the war, his father was imprisoned for his collaboration with the Germans. His mother emigrated to the USA.