Furthermore, the sounds of bombs and machine guns going off became a part of their everyday lives, and like so many Serbs, they worried instead about how they were going to get their next meal. Add to that fact that all members of the family — his parents especially — were losing weight at a rapid pace. In one scene, Heleta talks about his father developing a fever and how, upon changing him, he noticed what looked like those images he'd seen from the concentration camps of so many years before.
Yet despite these horrific events, his family does arrive at freedom - they are able to escape by swimming two miles down a river until they reach the side where the Serbs are, and just by chance one of the men who finds them just so happens to know his father's voice. Also, Heleta is eventually able to come to the United States, and also earn his college degree despite his early struggle with English. But most importantly, he has a resolution of peace, and shows it when he is later faced with a man who terrorized his family. Tempted to kill him, he declines, and instead just wants to move on with his life.
Many of the events described in this book are not far off from what many experienced during the major World Wars: killing, hunger, living in hiding, horrible sanitation, and humiliation, just to name a few. Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia is a book that you will likely read through quickly. I did so in just two sittings, and it's a story for anyone interested in this violent time that many have overlooked. After all, what better history lesson is there then a first hand account?
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