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Driving to Treblinka: A long search for a lost father
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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About this ebook
Diana Wichtel is raised in Vancouver, Canada by her mother, a Catholic New Zealander, and her father, a Polish Jew who miraculously survived the Holocaust. When she's 13, her life changes dramatically, as her mother whisks her and her siblings away to New Zealand. Though she's told her father is to follow, she never sees him again. Many years later she sets out to discover what happened. 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?
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Reviews for Driving to Treblinka
Rating: 4.40000015 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
10 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A profound account of Diana Wichtel's search for her lost father. During World War II Benjamin Hersz Wichtel (16 May 1910 to 26 November 1970) and his family are rounded up from the Warsaw Ghetto and placed on a train to the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. Ben escapes from a tiny window and runs off into the forest where he joins a Jewish resistance group. His mother, six of his siblings, their wives and children, are all murdered at Treblinka by the Nazi's. After the war, Ben finds a surviving brother before moving to Vancouver where he marries Diana's mother, New Zealander Patricia, and tries to carve out a new life. But he cannot escape from his past which continues to haunt him. Years later, his wife and children end up in New Zealand, not knowing what has happened to Ben who was to join them later. This book is Diana's search for what happened to her father, her search for the truth about her family, and her chance to walk in her murdered family's footsteps. She uncovers names and stories, but there are still many relatives whose names and stories are unknown. Incredibly sad, very moving.
Book preview
Driving to Treblinka - Diana Wichtel
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