Gertrud Isolani (1899–1988)

Gertrud Issacsohn was the daughter of a prominent German-Jewish journalist, Eugen Issacsohn. After she completed high school, she followed him into the profession. She began writing for the Berliner Tageblatt and other publications, producing essays, theater and book reviews.
She took the peudonym Gertrud Isolani because of increasing anti-Semitism in Germany. In 1921 she married and had a daughter. Isolani wrote short stories, did translations of French authors into German, reported for French and Swiss newspapers, and was a radio announcer in Berlin until forced to resign by the Nazis in 1933. She then emigrated with her daughter to Paris, where they were caught in the 1940 roundup of Jews by the French police and sent to an internment camp at Gurs. The French underground helped them escape and after a couple of years on the run, they reached safety in Switzerland. Isolani worked as a journalist in Switzerland for various periodicals, and published novels and short stories, sometimes using the pseudonym "Ger Trud." Her best-known work is her autobiographical novel Stadt ohne Manner (1945).