Neither Red Nor Dead: Coming of Age in the Former Yugoslavia During and After World War II

The Author, a member of a secular, non-practicing, Jewish family, is 12 years old when the Germans occupy former Yugoslavia. His family hides in a small village and eventually joins Tito’s guerrilla. At 14 years of age he is appointed a military courier, given an outdated Italian gun and sent alone to roam through mountains, forests, and small villages of Croatia. After the war, just when things start to look better, his father breaks down under the Communist pressure and the author is forced to take refuge again.

This is a story of how a youngster coped with dangers of Fascism and Communism and how extraordinary events can bring out the worst and the best in ordinary people. How the author, to keep himself sane in the turmoil, learned to see the funny side of things, to understand what makes people tick, to keep both eyes open, and when the going got really rough- to recite poetry. This is also a story of two brothers who, facing same difficulties, became very different adults and how a son unwittingly repeated some of his father’s history.