The Year That Keeps Returning is Goldstein's astonishing historical memoir of that fateful year--when the Ustasha, the pro-fascist nationalists, were brought to power in Croatia by the Nazi occupiers of Yugoslavia. On April 10, when the German troops marched into Zagreb, the Croatian capital, they were greeted as liberators by the Croats. Three days later, Ante Pavelic, the future leader of the Independent State of Croatia, returned from exile in Italy and Goldstein's father, the proprietor of a leftist bookstore in Karlovac--a beautiful old city fifty miles from the capital--was arrested along with other local Serbs, communists, and Yugoslav sympathizers. Goldstein was only thirteen years old, and he would never see his father again. More than fifty years later, Goldstein seeks to piece together the facts of his father's last days. The moving narrative threads stories of family, friends, and other ordinary people who lived through those dark times together with personal memories and an impressive depth of carefully researched historic details. The other central figure in Goldstein's heartrending tale is his mother--a strong, resourceful woman who understands how to act decisively in a time of terror in order to keep her family alive.

Originally published as: 1941 : godina koja se vraca. Zagreb : Novi Liber, 2007.

My father. The two ranks (1941-1945) ; In the jail of the District Court ; Cell No. 15 ; The camp with the beautiful name ; The letter -- The "Vujiécic Affair" and the roots of evil. The "Vujiécic Affair" and the roots of evil ; Five young killers ; "All for our cause" ; The dilemmas of the Ustasha leadership ; Pavelic's genocide plan ; Veljun and Blagaj ; Glina ; About victims and numbers ; A temporary halt to genocide ; Hitler's green light ; The uprising in Lika ; The outcome of the "Karlovac case" -- One spring in Karlovac. The yellow symbol that I did not wear ; The strange suicide of Filip Reiner ; The sealed and unsealed bookshop ; Cherchez les Juifs -- Jadovno. "We are all hostages now" ; On the road to Jadovno ; The Velebit death camp -- My mother, the Ustasha, and the Partisans. Cell No. 20 ; Fanatics, yes-men, and saviors ; The uprising in Banija and Kordun ; The refuge at Banski Kovaécevac ; A story of two villages ; Kraljevica and the Partisans ; Liberation.