The Rooster

This poignant story begins when the author discovers a secret manuscript by her late father about his incarceration in Jasenovac, the notorious WWII concentration camp run by Croatian ultranationalists. Thus begins her painful journey into the realities of the terrifying secrets her father kept from his family during his lifetime. This is the story of a father, as seen through the prism of a daughter’s memories of him. The personal story is offset against a greater political context and the destructive impact of nationalism on individuals and their families. It is a tale of survival, resilience and humanity. The book covers the time that the father, Dragan, spent in a World War II concentration camp set up by the separatist Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi-supported puppet state run by Croatian ultra-nationalists. The camp and the atrocities perpetrated there are still highly contentious issues in contemporary Croatia, Serbia and especially in Bosnia and Hercegovina. The absence of reconciliation over the events in the camp was one of the contributing factors in the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the subsequent Balkan wars and the continued instability of the region today. The memoir contains the manuscript left by Dragan, in conversation with his daughter Sibel, the author. It is indeed, a deeply personal learning experience about a part of her father that she never knew.