Driving to Treblinka

Ginger Series

As a young child Diana Wichtel lives in Vancouver, Canada. Her mother is a Catholic New Zealander, her father a Polish Jew who miraculously survived the Holocaust by jumping through the window of a train bound for the Treblinka death camp. When Diana's thirteen, her life changes dramatically: her mother whisks her and her two siblings to New Zealand to live. Their father is to follow. She never sees him again. Many years later she sets out to discover what happened to him. The search becomes an obsession as she painstakingly uncovers information about his large Warsaw family and their fate at the hands of the Nazis, scours archives across the world for clues to her father's disappearance, and visits the places he lived. This unforgettable narrative is also a deep reflection on the meaning of family, the trauma of loss, and the insistence of memory. It asks the question: Is it better to know, or more bearable not to?

©2017 Diana Wichtel (P)2025 Awa Press

Aa different approach to the subject

Remembering a parent from your childhood memories and then getting to know that person again through a search from years later was a very unique way to tell his Holocaust story. I actually found Wichtel's hunt to be exciting.