Diana Wichtel

Quick Facts

Intro

New Zealand journalist and writer

Places

New Zealand

Journalist Writer

Work field

Journalism Literature

Gender

Female

Birth

1950

Age

75 years

The details (from wikipedia)

Biography

Diana Wichtel, a New Zealand writer and critic, was born in Vancouver in 1950. Her mother, Patricia, was a New Zealander; her father, Benjamin Wichtel, a Polish Jew who escaped from the Nazi train taking his family to the Treblinka extermination camp in World War II. When she was 13 her mother bought her to New Zealand to live, along with her two siblings. Although he was expected to follow, she never saw her father again.The mystery of her father's life took years to unravel, and is recounted in Wichtel's award-winning book Driving to Treblinka. The book has been called "a masterpiece" by New Zealand writer Steve Braunias. New Zealand columnist Margo White wrote: "This is a story that reminds readers of the atrocities that ordinary people did to each other, the effect on those who survived, and the reverberations felt through following generations."

Driving to Treblinka won the Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General non-fiction at the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Wichtel was appointed staff writer at the New Zealand Listener in 1984. She joined the magazine from the English department at the University of Auckland, where she gained a Master in Arts, and also tutored. She has won many awards for her television criticism, profiles and feature writing. The New Zealand cultural critic and author Adam Dudding has written of Wichtel's "genius" for television reviewing: "Her reviews often strike a tone of tolerant bemusement; she's a visitor from Mars bearing witness to the latest bonkers manifestation of modern culture."