The icy grip of the river wrapped itself around his leg, threatening to pull him down.

For a moment, Pejo Petrovic felt the impulse to consent to the Sava's invitation to rest within its waters, but he remembered his promise. He shook his head vigorously to clear the drowsiness that was setting in - a sure symptom of hypothermia - to get himself to shore.

He was well-beyond the rear gate of the Jasenovac camp now, free of the suffering at the hands of the Ustashe. He was one of the lucky ones, one who managed to escape the clutches of the Croatian fascists and the death camp that he ultimately found himself in as a passive enemy of their rule.

As he heaved himself out of the chilly water, he pondered the merits of keeping his promise to Bojan, a partisan whom he'd met in camp. Pejo doubted it was his real name, the partisans always kept their real names secret to protect the remainder of the group should one find themselves being tortured by a fascist - German, Italian or Croat.

"There is a camp in Sisak," Bojan told him. "My son was taken there. If your escape is successful, you must find a way to rescue him."

As Bojan described the conditions in the camp, the childless Pejo took pity on him. No child should be made to sleep on a straw floor, removed from their parents, their only crime being born to someone was not acceptable to the Ustashe.

"I will look for him," Pejo said. "If I should ever find myself beyond these walls, I will find your son." He wondered to himself whether Danijel, whom his fathered called "Danko" was still alive at the camp. By his estimate, the boy would have suffered through six weeks of hellish conditions at Sisak, there was little chance he had survived.

Bojan had no aspirations about his own fate, the Croats would find an opportune time and place to kill him, most likely when he could be an example to some newcomers. They would kick him into the latrine pit and drown him in filth, or perhaps haul him out of a lineup of prisoners and part his throat with a Srbosjek, a wheat-threshing tool that the Croats called the "Serb cutter".

Pejo himself had already seen the Srbosjek in action. One guard smiled greedily as the others handed him a small sum of money, the proceeds of winning the bet as to who was the most proficient with the odd blade attached to a glove. The victims did not suffer long, gasping as the blood spat from their necks onto the ground. The other men in line understood what their deaths meant. The Ustashe were in charge, they held your life in their hands and they would enjoy killing you.

He was beyond their reach for the moment, outside the camp. There was no need to tempt fate by doing something so foolish as to break in to a camp. He could simply blend in or join the partisans and perhaps yet live a long, full life.

"Danko," he whispered to himself. "Your father believes you are still alive. Please do not disappoint either him or myself."

Bojan's description could not have prepared him for what he saw at the camp. Locating Danijel would be difficult, the children were spread out between several different buildings. He would need to operate quickly to find the child, but the sights of all of the others brought him to tears. Babies torn from their mothers lay naked in straw on the floor. A collection of skin and bones huddled together, trying to spare themselves a small measure of heat in an otherwise unheated and drafty factory building.

"I must save as many as I can," he thought to himself. "It will not be enough to save Danko alone."

Pejo moved quickly between the buildings under the cover of darkness, hoping to locate the child. Finally, one boy stood up.

"I am Danko," the child said as he brushed some straw from his ragged pants. Pejo studied him closely, he could not be sure that the boy was Bojan's son. He was 11 years old, as Bojan had said, and his features roughly matched those described by his father. Pejo could hardly believe he had managed to find him.

"Your father sent me to find you," Pejo said.

"Is he alive?" Danko asked.

"He was the last time I saw him," Pejo answered, regretting how he phrased his response. "We were in the Jasenovac camp together."

The boy's face changed from one of hope to despair upon hearing where Pejo had crossed paths with his father. Even the children knew it was not a place that many returned from.

As his eyes became adjusted to the darkness around him, they filled with tears at the sight of the wretched children there. Pejo could not leave them. A young girl tugged on his pantleg.

"Please take me with you," she said. "I don't belong here. My parents are Croatian."

"What difference does that make?" Danko snapped before Pejo could say anything. "Friends of the Ustashe don't end up here."

It was hard to argue with the boy's logic, but Pejo felt pity for the little girl, whose name was Marija.

"Where is your family?" he asked the girl.

"I don't know," she said. "They said father said something bad."

"He was a partisan?" Pejo asked, trying to understand the girl's explanation.

"He wasn't!" Marija said, raising her voice louder than she should have. Pejo gestured with his hand to quiet the girl, adding that he meant no offense.

"He wasn't," she repeated in a calmer tone. "He hates the Serbs as much as the Ustashe do. They're nothing but troublemakers."

Danko lunged toward the girl, but was restrained by Pejo, who tried to keep both of them quiet.

"Perhaps some are," Pejo said to the girl. "But look at Danko. He is just a boy who misses his father as much as you miss yours. He lives in the same country as you do, he is in the same terrible place through no fault of his own."

Marija stared at the young Serbian boy, at first intent on finding some flaw that would prove Pejo wrong. He stood in the same filthy rags as she did, eating the same horrid soup. She still could not help but protest, the prejudices she had been taught would not wither so easily.

"He...I don't want to leave here with a Serb," she finally blurted out. "They'll catch us if he is with us."

"He came here to find me!" Danko shot back. Pejo gently placed his hand on the boy's shoulder to quell his protest, and to let him know that he would handle it.

"I did come here for Danko," Pejo said. "But Danko doesn't mind if a Croatian escapes with him. He just wants out of here and to see his father. How about you?"

"Yes," Marija said, holding back tears of indignation mixed with fear and sadness.

Other whispers soon rose up from the floor, begging to be included. It distressed the man greatly, but he had to refuse. Most barely had the strength to stand up, let alone run away if the situation called for it. He scanned the room looking for others that might join them, he still wanted to save as many of them as he could, but he also wanted to keep his promise to Bojan.

"You," Pejo said, pointing to a boy who seemed more healthy than most of the others. "What is your name?"

"Novak," the boy said.

"Another Serbian," Marija said, eliciting a scowl from Pejo.

"Novak, are you able to run if I ask you to?" Pejo asked him.

"I am," he said. "Are you taking me too?"

He looked at Marija, who folded her arms in disgust at the suggestion and Danko, who seemed indifferent.

"Please," Pejo whispered to Marija, "he is just a little boy."

"You can come too," she finally said. Pejo looked at the other faces one last time, and knelt beside a young girl who was too frail to stand up.

"I will come back for you," he said. "I promise."

The group followed Pejo's instructions as they left the grounds, walking silently in the shadows. Fortune did not favor them.

"You there!" shouted a figure in the darkness, whirling a flashlight in the group's direction. "Where are you going with those children?!"

At Pejo's urging the group began running as fast their legs would carry them. They could hear the voice of the man shouting for them to stop. Soon, it was joined by another voice. Then the shouts were drowned out by gunfire.

Pejo felt his grip loosen from Novak's hand as he felt a searing pain in his back. He stumbled to the ground, and the children paused for a moment to see what happened.

"Danko!" Pejo said, "Get them out of here, now!"

The oldest child looked at the others and they sped away from their savior. Moments later, they heard more shouting and more shots. Only the voices of the men remained, Pejo's was no longer among them. The children would soon be overtaken, they simply could not run fast enough. They came to an intersection, Danko glanced around quickly, then looked at Marija.

"Take Novak and go that way. Hide, stay quiet and don't move until you don't hear the men anymore," he said quickly. "Follow that road until you come to a red building with a green door. Knock on it and ask for 'Pacov'. Do what he says and you'll be safe."

"What about you?" Marija asked.

"I'll catch up to you, just go. Take Novak, make sure you get to the red building," Danko said, before darting off noisily in the opposite direction. The children scurried away and found a small crawlspace near a building to wedge themselves into until the danger had passed.

"Get up, Novak!" they heard Danko shout in the distance, trying to distract the men. The men ran off after the sound, away from Marija and Novak.

"Stop right there!" one of the men hollered at Danko as he had managed to cut off the boy and now stood in front of him. The other man came up behind him.

"What should we do with him?" he asked the man standing in front of Danko.

"We can hardly take him back," the man replied. "The others might get ideas if we don't punish him." He motioned his fellow pursuer out of the line of fire, then fired two shots from his pistol into the boy's chest.

"Killed while trying to escape," he said. "These lousy Serbs."

"What about the others?" said the other man.

"Chased them into the river, didn't we?" the executioner suggested. "Drowned before we could save them, right? Come on, it's too cold out here."

Epilogue

There was shouting next door, troops from the Croatian Defense Council were busy harassing Serbians, and sometimes, worse.

Marija had heard these things on occasion before, but never near her home. Since the civil war started in Yugoslavia in 1992, these kinds of things had become all too common. She thought of the Savic family across the street, married for just a few years, with a beautiful little girl who had just turned two. The shouting was coming from their home.

She did not know them well. She did not even know their names.

Her door flung open and the 62-year-old woman marched across the street, boiling with fury as she listened to the thugs who called themselves soldiers joking about how pretty young Mrs. Savic was.

Marija stood for a moment in the front room, glaring at the soldiers as they took turns ogling the young lady. Finally, one of them sensed her presence and looked over. The rest followed suit.

"Well, what have you got to say for yourselves?" Marija asked pointedly in Croatian.

"Move along, old lady," one of the soldiers said. "This doesn't concern you. We're just cleaning up the neighborhood. You know, taking out the Serb trash."

"There's certainly trash in this neighborhood," the elderly woman snarled. "But they're wearing uniforms and calling themselves soldiers." Mrs. Savic looked at her neighbor, pleading without words for her to do something.

"Perhaps you left your hearing aid at home," the soldier growled. "I said, 'This doesn't concern you'."

"I heard you the first time," Marija said. "This is my neighborhood, not yours. No one asked for you to come clean it up, and certainly no one asked for you to come here and act like animals."

The soldiers all laughed as she finished, egged on by the growing rage in the gray-haired woman.

"Come on, grandma," another said. "You hate 'em as much as we do."

She paused for a moment, not at the statement, but rather upon the realization that the child was upstairs crying and Mr. Savic lay on the floor, blood streaming from his temple. She wondered whether he was breathing, Marija stood in a trance as she looked at the crimson stain on the floor. Only another scream from Mrs. Savic brought her focus back to the soldiers.

A soldier's hands were steadily lifting the top of the young woman as the others waited with anticipation to see what was underneath. Marija used the moment to snatch up a carelessly placed weapon and pointed it confidently at the men.

"That is enough!" she shouted as loud as her voice could get.

"Put the gun down, old lady," one of the men said, trying to calm down the angry woman. She glanced at him for a moment, taking her eye off the others. She felt a blinding pain in her cheek as she crumpled to the floor. A boot followed to her ribs, pushing her breath from her. Then another, and another.

She tried to raise her head to see what was happening. Her vision blurred and the light in the room seemed blinding. She saw the silhouette of a Serbian boy, dressed in rags. She thought she heard a voice as her eyes fluttered, unable to discern the figure completely. It was a voice she thought she recognized, one she last heard 50 years ago on the streets of Sisak, imploring her to run while he sacrificed himself.