Accident of Fate is a first-hand account of persecution, rescue, and resistance in the Axis-occupied former Yugoslavia. At the age of thirteen, Imre Rochlitz fled to Yugoslavia from his childhood home in Vienna following the Nazi Anschluss, leaving his family behind. In January 1942 the Ustashe (Croatian Fascists) arrested and interned him in the Jasenovac death camp, where he dug mass graves. On the verge of death, Rochlitz was released due to the extraordinary intervention of a Nazi general. He escaped to the Adriatic coast, where he and several thousand other Jewish refugees were protected by the army of Fascist Italy. After Italy’s surrender, he joined Tito’s Partisans, becoming an officer and army veterinarian, and rescued dozens of downed Allied airmen. In 1945, he fled Yugoslavia’s Communist regime and reached liberated southern Italy. In 1947, at the age of twenty-two, he emigrated to the United States.

With unique personal photographs and documents supporting the text, this eyewitness narrative covers little-known topics and provides a revealing historical account of the period. The book helps clarify and render accessible the complexities and contradictions of conflict and genocide in wartime Yugoslavia.

Imre Rochlitz was born in Budapest in 1925 but he spent his childhood in Vienna, where he lived until 1938. After surviving the war years in Yugoslavia, he emigrated to the United States and earned a law degree at New York University. He moved back to Europe in 1958. Encouraged by his family, he made a return trip to Yugoslavia in 1981, which sparked the writing of these memoirs.

Joseph Rochlitz is an opera and film director. He collaborated in the research and writing of Accident of Fate and based his documentary film The Righteous Enemy, about the Italian protection of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, on his father’s story.

Imre Rochlitz's profile page

Joseph Rochlitz is an opera and film director. He collaborated in the research and writing of Accident of Fate and based his documentary film The Righteous Enemy, about the Italian protection of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, on his father’s story.

Joseph Rochlitz's profile page