Jasha M. Levi

Requiem for a Country: a History Lesson Jasha M. Levi

A civilian internee of World War II, a fugitive in Rome from 1941-44, a partisan, and a member of Tito?s Yugoslav army, the author fought against the German occupation of Yugoslavia. After the war, as a foreign editor of the Belgrade daily, Borba, he covered the 1946 Paris Peace Conference, the 1948 Tito-Stalin rift, and the 1953 Panmunjom talks to end the Korean war. In 1956, as a UN and US correspondent, he resigned over Tito's refusal to support the Hungarian Revolution, sought and was granted political asylum in the US. During the period the author was a foreign editor of Borba from 1946-53, he wrote several books in his native Serbo-Croatian. His first title written in English was a 2009 memoir, The Last Exile. Requiem for a Country is about the destruction of Sephardic life in Bosnia, as well as about the dissolution of what used to be a harmonious coexistence of multiethnic people of Yugoslavia. It is an easy reading selection to bring to the beach or savor in front of a fireplace. It is at the same time an informative book a history professor would assign to stimulate research and discussion in a course on Eastern Europe, racial laws in Italy, WWII, and the cold war.