Published by the Školske novine publishing company, the book tells the story of Toni Herceg, who was killed near Kharkiv on 6 May 2025 while shielding wounded comrades during a drone attack.
The author, Zdenko Herceg, said that he wrote the manuscript out of a desire to preserve a record of his son’s life and the testimonies of the people who shared his journey.
He also recalled the moment when his son decided to join the defence of Ukraine after spending six months in Poland as an instructor as part of a NATO mission training Ukrainian soldiers.
“I knew that asking him not to go to Ukraine would have been like asking the Neretva River to flow uphill. He simply would not have been Toni anymore,” the author said.
“Memory lives on when it is shared,” Herceg concluded.
The work goes beyond the scope of a conventional biography, becoming a story about family, identity, roots, love and the values that shape life’s choices, it was said at the presentation.
Those in attendance were also addressed the Ukrainian and French ambassadors ambassadors, Vasyl Kyrylych and Fabien Fieschi respectively, who expressed their gratitude to Toni and his family.
“Without people like Toni, we would not have Ukraine,” said Ukraine’s Ambassador, Vasyl Kyrylych.
Croatia’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Anica Djamić, joined the event via video link from Kyiv.
The 254-page book, which includes photographs from family life, military service and the author’s artwork, presents a chronological account of Toni Herceg’s life, alongside numerous testimonies from people who knew him both as a soldier and as a person.
Toni Herzeg was a professional French soldier who held the rank of staff sergeant and who was appointed to serve as an instructor in military training of special units.
After he was engaged as an instructor in Mission Gerfaut, the French military operation dedicated to training and instructing Ukrainian soldiers, which was conducted in Poland as part of the broader European Union Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine (EUMAM), Toni Herceg decided to join the Ukrainian army as a volunteer in February 2025. He was killed as a hero on the Kharkiv front, shielding his fellow soldiers from a kamikaze drone on 6 May 2025. He was buried in Zagreb on 27 May 2025.
The author of the book, Zdenko Herceg, is a Croatian-French scientist internationally recognised in the field of molecular biology and cancer research. He is the founder and head of the Epigenomics and Mechanisms Branch (EGM) at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon