The Trap at Lošinj
by Miloš Saičič
ISBN 978-0-85905-786-8, (New, 2020), illustrated, A4, 76 pages, 250 grams, $40.00*
The autobiography of a Yugoslav soldier in WWII. Miloš Saičič was a young Serbian lawyer who joined the Royal Yugoslav Army under General Mihalovich. The Chetniks fought both the Germans and the Ustashi. The betrayals by Churchill and his twisted coterie meant their defeat by the communist partisans. The communist and Ustashi death camps and mass executions put into the pale the much propagandised, but very suspect, claims of German crimes.
He fled to Italy and after service in the Mediterranean he and his wife were in the Transit camp at El Shatt in Egypt before he migrated to Australia in 1948. He worked in Perth for the Hospital Collections Service, raised his family and died, aged 97, in 2008.
This is a rare story. Most Yugoslav materials available to the West being part of the Cold War stable with promotion of the ‘independent’ Yugoslavia, which was as brutal as anything both the Soviets and the ‘free’ West could devise.
This is a very small print run to record the title in Australian libraries and archives. It will be of interest to the children of those who fled Yugoslavia post war.