One of the Most Remarkable Books About the Holocaust Was Just Published
In Slavko Goldstein’s newly translated ‘1941,’ Nazi-backed fascists tear through the Balkans. Yugoslavia never recovered.
“I think I can pinpoint exactly the hour and day when my childhood ended,” writes Slavko Goldstein near the beginning of 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning. The date was April 13, 1941, when Goldstein was 13 years old. That morning, he asked his father if he could go out to play with friends. His father, Ivo, was hesitant: Just two days earlier, German troops had marched unopposed into Croatia, and tanks were on the streets of their small city, Karlovac. But he gave his permission, and Slavko went off. When he returned that afternoon, his father was gone: He was part of the first group of Karlovac citizens arrested by the new fascist regime. Ivo would never return home again, and by August he was dead, one of thousands of prisoners executed at the Jadovno camp that summer.