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A memoir of a boy whose childhood collides with history long before he stops believing in adventure.
When the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, eleven‑year‑old Ivo Lederer and his Jewish family were forced to flee their beloved home city of Zagreb. Using false papers, they bribed their way onto a small fishing boat that crossed the Adriatic by night, only to be arrested by Italian fascists, escape again, and spend three years hiding in Italy under constant threat of discovery.
In 1944 they boarded the Henry Gibbins, the only ship of European refugees brought to the United States during the war outside the meager immigration quotas, and were taken to Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York, where they lived behind barbed wire until after the war ended. Written in the vivid, clear voice of the boy he was, I Have Seen the Mississippi is a deeply humane memoir of a child’s escape from Europe to America, and of the life that followed. Richly illustrated with color photographs from the family archive, the book offers both an intimate Holocaust‑era survival story and an enduring testament to love, courage, and the small miracles that make survival possible.
— Rebecca Erbelding
— John Ivo Lederer
Paul A. Laudicina is chairman emeritus of Kearney, founder of its Global Business Policy Council, and the author of several books on global strategic issues; earlier in his career he served as legislative director to then‑U.S. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and as a senior executive at SRI International.
— Paul A. Laudicina
Michael Lederer is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, and screenwriter living in Berlin, Germany. Born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1956, he grew up in New Haven, New York City, Vienna, and Palo Alto and holds a B.A. in Theatre Arts from Binghamton University. He is the author of several books including the novel Cadaqués and the story collections The Great Game: Berlin–Warsaw Express and Other Stories and In the Widdle Wat of Time, and he is founding artistic director of the Dubrovnik Shakespeare Festival and co‑founder of the Safe Haven Museum in Oswego, New York.
— Michael Lederer
Introduction by Michael Lederer
Foreword by Paul A. Laudicina
Preface by Ivo John Lederer
Part One: The World as it Was
Part Two: The Crash
Part Three: False Respites
Part Four: Close Calls
Part Five: Deliverance
Part Six: To the “Mississippi”
Part Seven: Sequel
Photo Section I: Life in Europe
Photo Section II: A New Life in America
Afterword by Michael Lederer
Appendix: Historical Context by Ivo John Lederer