By Ken Valenti

WESTPORT–When Carl Wistreich’s grandfather and his family left his hometown of Jaslo, Poland, during the Holocaust, he made one decision that saved their lives. He headed east.

Crossing the border into Russia, Salomon Wistreich, his wife, son and daughter, plus his sister-in-law and nephew, were imprisoned in gulags where they were treated horribly. But they survived, while most of the family left behind did not.

 “It was slave labor,” Carl Wistreich said. “You weren’t fed well, you were starving, but in the long run it ended up they were lucky compared with the others.” 

The decision is at the heart of Carl Wistreich’s new novel, “My Lethal Obsession.” It will be released next Tuesday, Sept. 1, but the Westport Library will host a book launch for it at 7 p.m. the next night, Sept. 2. At that event, Wistreich will discuss the novel with Temple Israel Westport’s Senior Rabbi Michael S. Friedman. The event, free and open to the public, is part of the Saugatuck Scribes series at the library, which is at 20 Jesup Road.

A New Rochelle native, Wistreich has lived in Westport nine years. Last year, his wife Amy Wistreich was elected the town’s Second Selectwoman. 

In the novel, Gideon Wistreich, a professor of antisemitism studies, delves into his family’s history, agonizing over how his grandfather chose to go east – and why Jews have been subjected to millennia of hatred.

“He’s trying to figure out how the Jews have actually survived this onslaught over three thousand years,” Wistreich said. In his search, Gideon “gets on the wrong side of a high-ranking cardinal” in the Catholic church, Wistreich said.

While his family’s experiences are at its core, Wistreich wrote the book as a novel to appeal to a broader audience, weaving in “some intrigue and excitement and some mystery that will get people to read these stories.”

To do so, he employed an unusual framing device: the novel’s main character, Gideon, is fictional (although inspired Wistreich’s cousin, Robert S. Wistrich, who was a leading authority on antisemitism), but the family members Gideon researches are the author’s actual relatives.

“My book (fits) a lot of genres,” he said. “It’s a family history, it’s a fictional memoir of the main character. It’s a thriller, it’s a mystery and it’s also a Holocaust book.”

Wistreich’s aim is to make people aware of a little-known way that some survived the Holocaust – in the gulags. While only about 10% of Polish Jews survived, most of those who did escape did so the same way his grandfather did, he said.

The book was published by Post Hill Press and is being distributed by Simon & Schuster.

“Blending family drama with page-turning suspense, My Lethal Obsession confronts the eternal hatred one group has faced throughout history in very human, very personal terms, and honors the unbreakable will to survive and begin anew,” says Simon & Schuster’s description of the book.

Wistreich worked on the novel after a successful career in business. His varied experience includes serving as a mergers and acquisitions attorney at Skadden, a global leader in the field. He also managed a major grocery distributor, owned a New England truck dealership group and finally became CEO and co-owner of AC Business Media Inc., a media and business intelligence company. He sold his majority stake in the company in 2018.

A novel is not the usual post-career goal of a businessman, Wistreich noted. But he dove into literature, reading Russian masters such as Dostoyevsky and Gogol, as well as Nabakov, Saul Bellow, Wallace Stegner and “a lot of Hemingway,” among others. 

He also collected and pored over family memoirs.

He devoted three years to the novel, writing three or 3.5 hours in the morning, spending three or four hours on research in the afternoon. He also listened to 50 to 100 hours of interviews with Holocaust survivors collected by the USC Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles. Among them, he found three of his relatives.

He also found an account from a young witness of Wistreich’s great uncle, then a doctor in Jaslo, being loaded into a bus that carried victims into the woods to be shot.

Promoting the book on Instagram and TikTok, Wistreich has drummed up some anticipation for its launch.

“I’m so excited for you and can’t wait for my (signed) copy !!!” one commenter said. Others shared their experiences:

“I had hundreds of family members who were Polish Jews that were murdered by the Nazis. My grandparents were the only two survivors other than family who left for America and Palestine before the war.”

Not all looked positively on the book and Wistreich’s posts. Some comments in the social media feeds were marked by anger or hatred. Wistreich chose not to engage with them.

“It was a horrible thing to be assaulted this way even though it hasn’t discouraged me,” he said. “It has encouraged me to get out there and make sure I tell this story.”

Ken Valenti

^{_{A career journalist and lifelong resident of the New York City region, Ken Valenti has enjoyed decades of reporting local, regional and national news in New York and Connecticut. Topics of special interest are development, the environment, Long Island Sound and transportation. When not reporting, he’s always on the lookout for the perfect coffee shop or used book sale.}}