Please note that the posts on The Blogs are contributed by third parties. The opinions, facts and any media content in them are presented solely by the authors, and neither The Times of Israel nor its partners assume any responsibility for them. Please contact us in case of abuse. In case of abuse, A diplomat, a lawyer, and an entrepreneur by the age of 35, Alexander Djerassi was born and raised in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. He grew up surrounded by nature but with a family history deeply affected by war and tragedy overseas. Both grandfathers were Jews forced to flee Central Europe in the face of the Nazi onslaught in the 1930s. His grandmother, whose Huguenot ancestors faced religious persecution in France, became a respected scholar of the Holocaust and of Jewish-Christian relations.