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    A Refugee's Tale
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“The pattern of our lives is essentially circular.
We must be open to all points of the compass.”

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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PREFACE

This is a story of two wars, the Second World War and the ensuing Cold War, and of people overwhelmed by the onrush of greater events. Following WWII, Europe was awash with refugees. The newly emerging Cold War cut short the euphoria of victory over the Nazis as the Iron Curtain slammed shut. Three years after the war, there were still more than 800,000 refugees in 370 camps in the three Occupation Zones of Germany, and 25 in Italy. The Czechs and Slovaks escaping the communist regime following a coup d’etat in 1948 and hoping to join a patriotic legion they believed was being formed in the American Occupational Zone of Germany by an exiled Czech general were an unexpected mix in this volatile cauldron. The story follows the protagonist through the two wars.

Author Joe

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe Vitovec came to this country from Czechoslovakia in 1950 after escaping from the communist regime in 1948 and spending two years in various refugee camps in Germany, France, and Italy.  He has studied history and art at the Texas Christian University, and urban studies at the University of Texas.  He also spent the last forty years as a commercial artist, art director, and developer of training programs and training simulators for the Air Force, and as an instructor in political science at the Tarrant Community College in Fort Worth, Texas. He is currently retired and lives, along with his wife Ruth, in Anacortes, Washington.

THEME OF THE BOOK

Tempered by the war and devastated by the loss of his best friend sent to a concentration camp by the town SS commander, young Jan Neuman finds himself fleeing his country when the government is deposed in a communist coup. A myopic world too preoccupied with the euphoria of victory over the Nazis and the darkening cloud of the Cold War to see the plight of the displaced soon puts him to the test. In the ruins of Germany, sewers of Paris, refugee camps of Italy, and ultimately America, he comes to realize that freedom can exact a terrible price. He plumbs the highs and lows of guilt, betrayal, loneliness, romance, love, despair, and vengeance. Ultimately, in a chance meeting and confrontation with his old nemesis, the former SS commander, now in the service of his adopted country, he realizes that because of his steadfast adherence to principles, he has become an anachronism, suspended in a world that has passed him by. The Cold War ends. He answers the yearning in his heart and returns, only to find himself cast adrift—a foreigner in his own country and stranger in his own home.

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GALLERY

14Nazis marching into Austria during the Anchluss in 1938678
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Nazis marching into Austria during the Anchluss in 1938
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SAMPLE CHAPTERS AND FEATURED VISUALS

  • Chapter 1
    Chapter 1

    April 19, 2016 | Full Circle

  • Prologue
    Prologue

    April 19, 2016 | Full Circle

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