Little Joe - The Story of Josef Filipovic Surviving in a World at War while Fighting Another at Home

Author: Bill Wheatley

ISBN 978-1-62137-344-5 (softcover)

258 pages

Little Joe is the story of Josef Filipovic’s youthful struggle to survive in occupied Holland during World War 2. Besides the Nazi oppression everyone lived under, “Josko” was also fighting a battle at home against a more personal enemy. His father, a guestworker in the Dutch coal mines close to the German border, “was bent on destroying me,” and treated his son as an Untermensch in his own home. Trying to elude both his enemies, the fifteen year old Josko was captured by the Germans and taken to a forced labor camp at a coal mine in Germany. After surviving two years, he boldly escaped and was picked up by an infantry unit of the American army. Adopted by the tough GI’s--and renamed “Little Joe”--he became a soldier fighting the Germans and began the odyssey that would finally end five years later in New York harbor within sight of the lights of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Josef Filipovic was born in Vrbosko, Yugoslavia, in 1927 and came to America in 1949. He served in the U.S. Army as a combat photographer in Korea, attended City College, and worked in motion picture production in New York. He edited television documentaries and public affairs programs for CBS, PBS, and WGBH Boston, among other broadcasters. He retired to Cape Cod and died in 2012. Little Joe is told in Joe's own words and was written by Bill Wheatley, who has also published Life in the Cold and Crow Stories.X