What did the Tigerente creator take from his own hard childhood?

Janosch was born Horst Eckert in 1931, and grew up in Upper Silesia, in what is now Poland, amid poverty, violence and a drinking father. His book Oh, wie schön ist Panama came out in 1978.

Janosch once said: The first years of my life were the total destruction of my person.

That is the answer in his own work. His characters resist the oppression and injustice he knew as a child, and he once admitted that he long tried to push those memories away with alcohol. His works have since been translated into around 40 languages, so those stories of resistance now reach readers across the world.