From Hell to Freedom

From Hell to Freedom, Croatian Odyssey to Canada is the true story of Nikola Plesa. The Canadian entrepreneur, who lives in Calgary, Alberta, was born and raised in Croatia. But his fatherland was not free during those years and neither were his people. As a child he witnessed the killings of thousand of countrymen who fled from the communist partisans to Bleiburg (Austria). And after the end of the Second World War his home-country was under the communist dictatorship of Tito. Always hungry, suppressed and angry he wanted to run away even as a child. But he had to wait until adulthood to make his escape over the treacherous Karawanken Alps to Freedom. Nikola's biography of life in the Balkans as a Croatian from the thirties to the mid-fifties is an account of the domination by Serbs. It is also a story of agony, death and tears. Even after coming to Canada, for more than thirty years nightmares chased his memories. And then there was always the question of "Istina," which is a Croatian word and means "truth." Victors write history, he says. "For that reason I wanted to tell my side of Istina, the way I experienced and witnessed events - a truth which still lies hidden in a countryside soaked in blood."