“The things I had seen and suffered were burning inside of me; I felt closer to the dead than the living, and felt guilty at being a man, because men had built Auschwitz, and Auschwitz had gulped down millions of human beings, and many of my friends, and a woman who was dear to my heart. It seemed to me that I would be purified if I told its story …”

Croatia, a republic in Southeastern Europe, was, until 1991, part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), which was a federation of six states: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. Like other republics in the federation, Croatia comprised a mixed ethnic population. In the case of Croatia, this population included a majority of Croats (Roman Catholic), along with Hungarian, Serbian (Orthodox), and Bosnian (Muslim)