Not all casualties of war die on the battlefield. In the wake of
World War II, Yugoslavia purged its territory of the ethnic
Germans who had formed a part of its human mosaic. Tarred with
their ethnic origins and the conscription of their fighting-age men
into the Waffen SS, these Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans who had
lived in the region for generations, were rounded up at the war's
end and herded into concentration camps. Those who were not
murdered or did not die from the harsh conditions were expelled
from the village homes their families had known and loved for
three hundred years.
	
    Like thousands of other Germans in the Danube Valley at the
end of the war, author Luisa Lang Owen and her family were
chased from their home. They were then lodged in a sheep stall and
resettled in a camp with other Germans from her village. Shorn of
their possessions, given little food or fuel, pressed into hard labor,
beaten by guards, and separated from their families, many of
Yugoslavia's Volksdeutsche despaired and many died. Luisa barely
survived as those around her succumbed to malnutrition, disease,
and exposure.

    Nine years old when she entered the concentration camp in
1945, Owen survived the persecution of her people, eventually
finding herself in America, where she made a new life for herself, a
life that nonetheless held within it the memories and lessons of the
atrocities she had experienced in her homeland.

    Her haunting memoir provides a window into the ethnic
cleansing that preceded the recent exterminations in Bosnia and
Kosovo by fifty years an episode of horrors that has not appeared as
even a footnote in descriptions of the more recent atrocities
practiced in that region. She reminds us of a massive crime that has
been conveniently forgotten by providing a personal depiction of
what ethnic cleansing is really about.

_________________________________________________________

LUISA LANG OWEN, born in Yugoslavia before the war, came to
America in 1951. A practicing artist who lives in Yellow Springs,
Ohio, she is a professor emerita of art education at Wright State
University.


Number Eighteen: Eastern European Studies


What people are saying about this book

". . . the author movingly recalls the hardships they endured—little or
no food, forced labor, children separated from their families—and the
rare kindnesses, as when a Serbian housewife gave food to Luisa
and her mother. The outside world eventually took notice, and the
family was able to emigrate to the U.S. in 1951. An affecting and
valuable addition to the literature of war and genocide."—Kirkus
Reviews

". . . brings to life as never before the inhumanities that can be visited
upon innocent noncombatants in an atmosphere of ethnic hatred; but
it also teaches us much about the resilience and promise of the human
spirit."—James P. Scanlan, Professor Emeritus, Ohio State University

". . . a compellingly riveting story that speaks powerfully for the
innocent victims of any war."—Carole Rogel, author, The Breakup
of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia