announces the English release of
From Bazooka to Bosnia
Sixty Years of (non)Journalistic Experiences
Awards & Reviews
Awards
Poland's Second-Highest Decoration
On June 4, 2013, in Warsaw, Poland, President Bronislaw Komorowski awarded Dick Verkijk the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, the second highest decoration in Poland. President Komorowski stated that Verkijk was receiving the award "for [his] outstanding services rendered for the promotion of Poland's transition to democracy, for acting as a truthful witness to the situation on the ground during the period of martial law and for [his] accomplishments in journalistic undertakings."
Czech Republic Award
The Czech Republic celebrated the Day of the Fight for Freedom and Democracy on November 16, 2010. At that occasion the Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes awarded Dick Verkijk the Vaclav Benda Medal for his "significant role in the fight for the restoration of freedom and democracy of the Czechoslovak Republic during the Communist totalitarian Power (1948-1989)."
Utah Outstanding Book Award
In August 2010, at the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the Polish trade union Solidarity, the European Solidarity Center awarded Dick Verkijk the Medal of Gratitude for his (non)journalistic support of Solidarity. In 1980, the then-communist Polish government was forced to accept the first independent trade union in Eastern Europe, thanks to the famous strike in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk.
Polish Trade Union Medal of Gratitude
In September 2007, From Bazooka to Bosnia also earned the predicate Outstanding Book award in the Nonfiction History/Heritage category by the League of Utah Writers at their annual awards event. The book received the Our History - Our Heritage Publication Award 2007, and Verkijk received the Gold Quill and Diamond Award for his work.
Reviews
"Rare combination of courage and ingenuity"
Max van der Stoel, former High Commissioner for National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, calls Verkijk in his foreword to this book a journalist "who could not be intimidated" and who had "a rare combination of courage and ingenuity" and because of that "succeeded again and again to gather essential information about the developments within the communist regimes."
"Best postwar Eastern-Europe-journalist of the Netherlands"
In 1997, these memoirs were published in the Netherlands. Dr. Sipke de Hoop, professor at the University of Groningen, wrote in a March 1998 review in the Dutch scientific monthly on Foreign Affairs, the Internationale Spectator, that Verkijk’s "passion has turned him into maybe the best postwar Eastern-Europe-journalist of the Netherlands."
"Enormous richness of detail"
The Polish-Dutch journalist Sasza Malko wrote in the literary supplement of the weekly Vrij Nederland on December 13, 1997: "The book consists of so many stories, meetings, as if hundreds of people have bundled their experiences. Each of us, traveling journalists, has been a witness of a historic moment once. But he was immediately everywhere present. He describes it with an enormous richness of detail. The emotions are fresh, as if it happened a few weeks before, the historic account agrees, and you are overcome by the feeling of recognition: indeed, so it was, so it felt, so it went."