The Running Shoes – Overview

Summary

The Running Shoes is a dramatized graphic novel about the destiny of the Jews in the Banat region in Serbia.

Tomislav Fišer is an eleven-year old boy, who lives in the town of Pančevo with his family: his younger sister Sara, his mother Klara and father Leo. In the ground floor of their house they have a family-run shop “Ofner and son”. After school Tomislav often plays with his classmates Miroslav and Johan. In the ethnically diverse region of Banat, Tomislav, Miroslav and Johan – a Jew, a Serb and a Banat Swabian (ethnic German), face no obstacles to being good friends and fans of a town’s most famous athlete Julije Bauer, a member of Yugoslav national team, sprinter and holder of the national record on 100 metres, who competed in European Athletics Championship in Italy and the Olympic Games in Berlin. There is also a little girl Agnes, who likes Tomislav secretly. Aleksandar’s favourite uncle Jovan lives in Belgrade. When Tomislav and his sister Sara go to see uncle Jovan in Belgrade, they will visit the Geca Kon’s bookshop and try well-known cacao shake in the famous cafe “Ruski car” (“The Russian Tsar”). But when Germans occupy the country, everything will change and Pančevo will turn into a place of terror and crime. Being deported from Pančevo over the Danube river together with the rest of the Jews from Banat, they end up in Belgrade again. Tomislav, Sara and the mother will find that the Geca Kon’s bookshop turned into a German bookshop “Südost” and the shop windows are covered with the placards announcing “The Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition”…

The Running Shoes is a story about complex moral dilemmas imposed under difficult circumstances, all this told from the perspective of a young Jewish boy Tomislav.