Accident of Fate is a first-hand account of persecution, rescue, and resistance in the Axis-occupied former Yugoslavia.
At the age of thirteen, Imre Rochlitz fled to Yugoslavia from his childhood home in Vienna following the Nazi Anschluss, leaving his family behind. In January 1942 the Ustashe (Croatian Fascists) arrested and interned him in the Jasenovac death camp, where he dug mass graves. On the verge of death, Rochlitz was released due to the extraordinary intervention of a Nazi general. He escaped to the Adriatic coast, where he and several thousand other Jewish refugees were protected by the army of Fascist Italy. After Italy’s surrender, he joined Tito’s Partisans, becoming an officer and army veterinarian, and rescued dozens of downed Allied airmen. In 1945, he fled Yugoslavia’s Communist regime and reached liberated southern Italy. In 1947, at the age of twenty-two, he emigrated to the United States.
With unique personal photographs and documents supporting the text, this eyewitness narrative covers little-known topics and provides a revealing historical account of the period. The book helps clarify and render accessible the complexities and contradictions of conflict and genocide in wartime Yugoslavia.
Price: $31.99
Pages: 240
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Imprint: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Series: Life Writing
Publication Date:
01 July 2011
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781554582679
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
The Holocaust, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / Holocaust, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
"With Accident of Fate we have a first-hand record of the much darker period between 1938 and 1945 which, as Rochlitz insists, he survived by pure chance. And very convincingly, after one discovers that over these few years Rochlitz was imprisoned several times, forced to dig mass graves at the Jasenovac death camp and fought alongside fugitive Partisans. It is not, however, Rochlitz's tribulations that distinguish this book, but his sombre observations and unbiased perspective. As a foreign Jew in Yugoslavia, Rochlitz was an outsider, but being young, having learnt the language and being in possession of an amiable character, Imre easily became the Yugoslav Mirko. This peculiar double-sidedness gives Rochlitz's memoir invaluable significance for the historiography of Yugoslavia's wartime fratricide.... The value of Imre Rochlit'z memoir is that it does not attempt to conceal the ordinary. Thus we find rare and rather unpleasant descriptions of how biological needs were met in death transports and camps, or of matters of hygiene during prolonged guerilla resistance. There are also vivid descriptions and scrutiny of the Partisans' sex lives or lack thereof, which remains a taboo for Yugoslav veterans and a controversial subject in historiography to this day. Equally valuable are Rochlitz's stories of how food was procured and provisioned, as well as everyday pastimes and entertainment in zones of war. Finally, he describes how the Partisans perceived the Jews, how they treated dissent and Otherness, and how they navigated between allies and enemies to emerge as sole victors, although at a high price.... Rochlitz proves himself to be a shrewd, incisive and very critical observer.... [In] this book which so impresses with its thoroughness of historic detail, its meticulous research and contextualization, illustrated with authentic photographs, and reprints of original documents and maps. This is a book both for scholars and for the general reader, but especially for young readers who find the horrors of the Holocaust to hard to imagine. While gruff at times, Rochlitz's recollections are never ill-hearted. Behind his criticisms we find a deep, unchallenged humanity and an inspiring passion for life.
Table of Contents Accident of Fate: A Personal Account, 1938–1945 by Imre Rochlitz and Joseph Rochlitz
List of Illustrations
Preface
Prologue: Vienna
1. Anschluss
2. Zagreb
3. Invasion
4. Prison
5. Jasenovac
6. Release and Escape
7. Split
8. Novi
9. Kraljevica
10. Rab
11. Lika
12. Joining the Partisans
13. Veterinarian
14. A Communist Regime
15. Friendships and Hardships
16. Airmen
17. Seventh Offensive
18. The Captain and the Commissar
19. Vlado
20. Departure
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Appendix
Glossary of Names and Places
Selected Bibliography
Index
