The Rooster - Discovering My Father's Memories from the Jasenovac Concentration Camp

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 concentration camp in the former Yugoslavia. 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.