For a moment, Pejo nearly kept walking. It would have been easier to keep about his business, to not interfere. But the wails of the child would not permit him.

"What has this child done?" he said politely to the policeman.

"It's not your concern," the officer shot back without looking at Pejo. "She is an enemy of the state."

"An enemy? My heavens, such a dangerous little girl! Perhaps there is a bomb in her school book," Pejo said, mocking the policeman. The uniformed man whirled to look at Pejo, more than annoyed with his insinuation that the girl had done nothing wrong. He clung tightly to the child's arm as he addressed Pejo.

"And what is it to you? Would you like to join her?" he asked. "If not, I suggest you move along."

"I would not wish to join her," Pejo said. "Perhaps I may take her place."

He lunged toward the policeman, who let go of the child to defend himself. The girl ran without thanking her savior. The middle-aged man was no match for the younger policeman and found himself bloodied and subdued on the pavement within moments.

"Let's take you in and see if we can't change this attitude of yours," the policeman said, huffing from the struggle. "Perhaps we can teach you respect for the authorities."

Pejo thought, for an instant, to inform the officer that he did not consider him an authority, but rather a bully, rounding up innocent Serbian and Jewish children to be sent away. But there was no point in any further provocation, so he remained silent. He walked without resistance to the police station, a few blocks away. He was shoved violently into a cell and left there. Nearly two days passed before anyone came to address him.

"Petar Petrovic," said the captain of the station, a man dressed in an ornate uniform more befitting of a general than a police captain. "They say you're a partisan. Come, let's find out more about your associates."

"Surely your mind is made up already," Pejo said as he walked through the open door of the cell. "Is the torture room warm? It was quite chilly in the cell."

The captain stopped abruptly, grabbing Pejo's shirt around at the chest. He glowered at the prisoner before regaining his composure.

"You filthy Serb," he said calmly. "Partisan or not, you will leave here with respect or you will not leave at all."

Pejo looked at the man, studying him. He said nothing but motioned for the captain to continue to the interrogation room. Inside waited a younger man, dressed as a police officer but undoubtedly a member of the Ustashe. The Croatian fascists did not easily blend in, even in a police station.

"Take a seat, Mr. Petrovic," he said, smiling obnoxiously as he sized up the prisoner. "Petrovic....of course you are a Serb. Tell me, are all Serbs as foolish as you?"

"I could answer, but should you trust the answer of a fool?" Pejo replied. The young officer chuckled and pawed at the stick hanging from his belt. He would no doubt be using it soon if this mouthy Serb persisted.

"I see no reason, Mr. Petrovic...may I call you Petar? Your Serbian name leaves a bad taste in my mouth," he said, continuing after Pejo nodded politely. He hoped to elicit a response from his prisoner, but Pejo was not so easily baited.

"I see no reason for a man, walking down a street, to interrupt a policeman in the act of carrying out his duty," the young man said. "Why should you intervene? She was a Jew, not even a Serb, so you were wasting your time."

"There was a child who needed my help," Pejo said. "Do not shame yourself by bothering to make up some lie about what she had done wrong."

The young man pulled the stick from his belt and laid it on the table before walking around behind Pejo. He suddenly and violently punched his prisoner in the back of the head.

"We...do not lie or make mistakes, Petar," the man said, waiting for Pejo to recover from the blow before continuing.

"It is my experience, Mister..." Pejo paused waiting for the man's name.

"You may call me 'Ivan'."

"It is my experience, Ivan, that certain children seem to commit petty theft or insult your police officers at a much higher rate than the Croatian children do," Pejo said.

"Due to their upbringing," Ivan growled, fighting back his boiling anger. "These Serbian parents do not teach their children respect or the difference from right or wrong. They leave it to us to teach their children the proper ways."

"But you said she was a Jew," Pejo interrupted. Ivan roughly slammed Pejo's face into the table in front of him and held it against the wood.

"Kindly let me finish," he said. "And these Jews are no better." He yanked his hand deliberately back, pulling Pejo back up by his hair. Ivan was immediately disappointed when he saw no change in his prisoner's demeanor toward him.

The officer retrieved his stick from the table and walked over to the door, where another police officer handed him a folder with a few papers inside.

"Our apologies that we did not address you immediately after your arrest, Petar," Ivan said in a distant voice as he leafed through the pages of the file. "You have not led much of a life and it wasn't easy finding information about you."

"There is nothing of interest regarding me," Pejo answered. "But if you asked, I would have freely offered anything you might find inside your file."

"You are 37 years old. Not married. Your father was a Serbian who died of tuberculosis in 1923," Ivan said. "Ah, this is interesting. Your mother's name is Kata. That is not much of a Serbian name, now is it?"

"It is Croatian," Pejo said.

"Indeed," Ivan said. "Such a sickening woman, having a child with a Serb. If she were still alive perhaps we would have arrested her by now on principle."

For the first time during the interrogation, Pejo felt a tiny flame of anger igniting within him. He would resist adding fuel to it, his parents had raised him differently.

"So now the Ustashe has principles?" he said. The young man took the bait and clobbered Pejo across the shoulder with his stick, knocking him to the floor. Pejo suspected his arm might be broken. At a minimum, he was in an incredible amount of pain.

"A Serb should address me regarding principles!? You...truly are a fool," Ivan said, lowering his voice with each word until he had brought his temper back under control.

"I can see we are not getting anywhere, let us discuss your partisan activities," the officer said. "Since you are at a minimum a nosy Serbian who ought to keep out of other's business, I can only suspect that you are in the midst of planning some act of violence or sabotage. After all, it's in your nature."

"My nature," Pejo said, almost whispering. He thought about the riots in the days after Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. Serbian shops were destroyed, people were hurt and killed. And yet his father, a Serbian told him that the Croatians and Bosniaks were not his enemies.

"People are not born to hate, it is taught," his father would tell him. "And therefore it is also possible to teach them to love again." But sitting in this police station, Pejo was not so sure.

"I have no time for partisans or fascists," he finally said to the officer. "I only wish to live my life in peace, even amidst war and fighting around me."

"Serbians are not capable of peace!" Ivan blustered, having finally reached his breaking point with Pejo.

"And what is a Serbian?" Pejo asked sharply.

"Your father was a Serbian," Ivan answered. "That makes you one."

"What made my father Serbian? He was born in Sarajevo and lived there all of his life. He never even visited Serbia," Pejo said. "What criteria does one apply to determine whether someone is Serbian?"

The question clearly exasperated Ivan, who sighed heavily and launched into another tirade about Petar's ancestors.

"So it is by blood I am Serbian, you say," the prisoner responded, making no attempt to hide that he was patronizing the young officer. "And if you should require a blood transfusion to survive a wound, and only Serbian blood is available, do you become Serbian?"

"That's preposterous!" Ivan bellowed. "One does not become Serbian by blood alone."

"Then perhaps it is language. Yet I can speak German and Croatian, perhaps I am one of those," Pejo continued, now amused by the growing frustration of the officer.

"Or one gives precedence to where one was born? I was not born in Serbia, perhaps I am not Serbian," he said.

"You ARE Serbian!" the young man demanded. "You cannot deny your father was a Serbian!"

"And my mother was Croatian," Petar interrupted. "Do I not get to choose which half I want to be?"

Ivan yanked his stick from his belt and swung mightily at Pejo's head. He struck a glancing blow, enough to cut the prisoner, but did not do the kind of damage he had hoped.

"You lash out in anger because you cannot tell me what a Serbian is," Pejo explained, "Let me explain it to you. Serbia is a collection of lines drawn on a map. Within it live people, some of whom choose to call themselves Serbian, but none of whom can name the criteria under which one becomes Serbian any more than you can."

Pejo glanced at Ivan, expecting to be assaulted for his impertinence, but Ivan only looked at him, clearly engaged by his prisoner's words.

"Croats and Germans are better than Jews or Serbians, and yet none can agree on what makes one a Croat or a Jew. No, we only claim that we are better. I witnessed this outside Moritz Schiller's deli nearly 30 years ago now. And the shots from Princip accomplished almost nothing. Here we are, in the nation 'freed' by his actions, still killing one another, still oppressing, still vying for superiority. The yolk of the Habsburg replaced by the rule of the Ustashe.

"But we are who we decide to be, not what we are labeled. And if you are judged as a human being and not by your patriotism or your ethnic pride? How will you measure?" Pejo glanced at Ivan after finishing his speech. Ivan only stared blankly, deep in thought.

"You let this filthy Serb talk you this way?" cackled the voice of the police captain, having just entered the room at the end of Pejo's speech.

"We have erred," Ivan informed the captain, the words of his prisoner planting a seed of doubt within him. "He is not Serb. He is Croatian by his mother." He turned to acknowledge Pejo, but the prisoner bristled at the suggestion.

"He has learned nothing," Pejo said to the captain, motioning toward his interrogator. "I am nothing. Only an enemy of this regime and what it stands for."

"A confession!" the captain said. Ivan glared at his prisoner, his look was equal parts anger and confusion.

"An enemy of the regime," Ivan said. His voice carried a hint of disappointment in Pejo for continuing to defy the authorities. "He will be on the next train headed to Jasenovac."

He leaned down to Pejo as the captain left the room to make the preparations to send Pejo to the concentration camp at Jasenovac.

"Perhaps, dear Serb or Croat or whatever you choose to be, you find more peace in death at the camp than you have in this life."