The Former Yugoslavia’s Notorious Evil Island Gulag
Goli Otok - Hell in the Adriatic is
the true story of Josip Zoretic's tragic experience and survival as a political prisoner
of the former Yugoslavia's most notorious prison, Goli Otok, and the circumstances that
led to his imprisonment. He provides a first hand account of the island prison labor camp
from 1962-1969 that institutionalized a system of repression and enslavement against those
who opposed the communist regime and the spread of greater Serbian authority. It is a rare
detailed description of the evil and horrors that happened on Goli Otok.
REVIEWS
Goli Otok - Hell in the Adriatic is one man's story of life,
death, escape, and punishment in post-World War II Yugoslavia. The man was Josip Zoretic
and the setting is Goli Otok, the "Naked Island" prison camp in the Adriatic
Sea. The story is straight forward and brutally frank in its descriptions of day-to-day
life on the island-prison. Some years ago Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave a similar picture in
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich about life in the Gulags of the Soviet
Union. This book brings light to the other gulags in the former Yugoslavia and puts to
rest once and for all the myth of "Communism with a Human Face."
C. Michael McAdams
University of San Francisco, retired
Author of Croatia: Myth & Reality
*
* *
Suspenseful, absurdist, and
instructive. Although Goli Otok is a memoir, it is written so vividly,
with a lot of dialogue, that it reads like a novel, a grim political satire with humor,
wit, and insightful historical asides. I enjoyed reading it more than I expected I would.
In my novel, April Fool's Day, I set a chapter in the Goli Otok prison
colony, but couldn't evolve this much intensity and suspense (as Mr. Zoretic), which shows
you that a strange life well described can easily outpace and beat fiction. I
strongly recommend the book to wide audiences, historians, travelers. . . everybody.
Josip Novakovich
Award Winning Author
* * *
A raw and poignant first hand account of the gross,
systematic human rights violations of political prisoners in the former Yugoslavia's most
notorious prison. This book serves as a testament to the infallible sufferings the
Croatian people endured under the Communist Yugoslav regime.
Brenda Brkusic
Award Winning Filmmaker, Freedom from Despair
Producer, PBS-TV
*
* *
Among the most
important contributions to Croatian History. (complete
review)
Katarina Tepesh
Author of Escape from Despair
*
* *
This
book is a must for the reader who is interested
in post-war Yugoslavia. It relates the experiences of prisoners who were
punished and tortured, sometimes to death, on what is know as the
"Naked Island." The book spans a seven-year period, starting in
1962, when the author was arrested for political reasons and sentenced to
a term for crimes he did not commit. He is beaten and tortured numerous
times in an effort to extract a fabricated confession and is finally tried
and convicted. From inside the prison, he witnesses the atrocities that
the Communist regime inflicted on anyone who did not abide by their
ideology. The accounts are straighforward and written in a simple manner.
The author does not espouse his own political theories and refrains from
relating the grisliest details. It is a book of events that enables the
reader to make up his own mind about the ethics of the Communist era and
those they enpowered.
Nancy Crenshaw
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