I was born in 1933 Bosanski-Brod, Croatia in a Mobil Oil Refinery where I lived with my father, mother and sister. I had a good childhood within the refinery and outside the gates of it and I am going to recount only the memories of the impact through the past 83 years of my life. Across the River Sava, was a town called Slavonski-Brod, a larger town with mixed population of Croats, Serbs, some Germans and a few Gypsies. Every Sunday, various people from the neighborhood would go to the central square of Slavonski-Brod to take a walk and talk and meet neighbors family and friends. One day I noticed that some of the people had on their lapels a square patch with the Star of David inscribed with the big letter Z, which stood for Jew. Quite frankly I saw this as a joke. Then being only 6 or 7 years old, my questions as to the patch were not answered to my satisfaction and I let it pass. The problem is millions of people, including 6 million Jews, ignored the significance of the square patch and Nazi propaganda, and paid with their lives. In the 1940s the propaganda was from the Ustasha (Croat Nazis) and the German Nazis and their message traveled pretty quick. But, including my friends and family, they ignored the signs. The Jews saw the change without deciding or taking action as how to survive. They were intelligent and educated enough to understand this change. Living their comfortable life, with some ignorance of change, or just not believing the truth, because maybe the events that took place were an accident of history. But for me personally, and maybe a few others, those who survived the holocaust and the biggest crimes against humanity in Croatia, makes me responsible to myself and my fellow men, to bring the facts to the light without a shadow of a doubt or hiding any of the offenses for I am being made aware of the ugly signs of the 1930’s in Europe are again upon us.
After the war, my exposure to the dangers of staying alive in the Middle East as a soldier in the Israel army 1950’s , and military police on the border patrol, survival in Croatia taught me a unique and valuable lesson. In order to survive you got to look at your surroundings, the past and present history of the people, and have a bit of prophetic vision in order to know what will happen in a certain time frame. In 1943 the Fascist Italian State surrendered to the Allies and the Rab Concentration Camp was closed. Neither I or my mother wanted to escape from Rab or Croatia to Italy or Portugal but we stayed with the partisan forces to fight it out, waiting for the victory by the allies and listening to Winston Churchill’s radio broadcast, especially since my mother was fluent in English. Until only 15 years ago in 2000 I forgot all war events because I thought it was an historic accident but three years ago I decided it was history repeating itself and in the most horrific, dangerous and unacceptable way. While in the Israel military police dealing with the border patrol and the Arabs where I was stationed, I had several encounters with the Arabs that threatened my life. I remembered vividly events that took place when the look in their eye was not of peace but evil.
During my three years stay in Israel I could see the lack of a peaceful future in a short time frame, I had to be honest with my grandfather, telling him I would like to be educated in the US or England. I may be judged as being wrong or short sighted because my statement in 1955 was to my grandfather and family it is very unfortunate that in 1955 I could not see any real peace or stable future in the Middle East for the next several decades. I was supported by my family and my grandfather until I reached graduation in 1962 at the University of Birmingham in England getting a degree in Chemical Engineering. I actually tried to stay in Israel to study Chemical Engineering but there was a language problem. Only God knows why. I had a very successful engineering career in Europe and the USA in the last fifty-five years. I settled in to my normal life, married in 1970 and have no children. Suddenly came upon me the need to write a book on the occasion of my 80th birthday, November 2013. I realized that I had a story to tell since the whole past came to me like an avalanche, a wake up call, and my duty before the end of my days was to tell the story as it was and its impact today I really see now. At the end of the World War II, several heroic and compulsive desires of survival and victory were the uprising at Sobidor Poland and Jasenovac, Croatia. Obviously all the events I witnessed in the past and today’s news from CNN reminded me of the war and the significance as warnings for today’s events. What happened in Croatia and Europe was due to: government philosophy and the economic environment creating Nazis in countries of various religious and ethnic cultures. Various ethnics groups like Serbs, Jews, and Croats living in Yugoslavia in peace prior to 1940. Nazis using genocide as a solution in their political platform were to determined intheir tasks to succeed. In Germany the Jews took the blame first. Today the situation is world wide, more violent and dangerous. There are two issues:
(a) Governments and men in power, and (b) one ethnic group radical Islam who want to dominate the world by violence just like the Nazis.
As far as I am concerned, I cannot see any explanation why the governments that have been aware in the World War II Holocaust and unrest have not taken the necessary military steps to sooner eradicate the situation in the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, and North Africa. All the measures taken recently by the men in power, did not see or were not interested in getting to the root of the problem. Maintaining a state of uncontrollable crime of the fanatic minority using stolen assets from the Western World to finance their crimes such as oil fields in the Middle East. The Western Governments military activity in the last year using drones seem to have some effect on crushing radical Islam. The new immigration of tens of thousands of people from Syria and Africa is creating social unrest in Europe and Turkey, giving access to radical Islam who now have emptied the country they dominate of citizens and infiltrating their supporters and terrorists into Europe to start in destroying our hard earned civilization of more than 1,000 years.
They already demand that their supporters have rights such as head dress and other demands that reminds me of 1940 in Croatia when Jews wore the Star of David as marked humans to be massacred within months by Nazis.
Ignoring today’s events by radical Islam is unacceptable and must be stopped.
We are already seeing the beginnings taking place. In recent news, a Muslim refused to serve alcohol on a plane, the Jews are being accosted in Europe and killed in Israel. Those are the signs I saw at a young age when Jews were singled out by wearing a Star of David. We did not act then we must act now united and determined to succeed.