In 2017, Going West was the first festival to invite award winning journalist Diana Wichtel to talk about her newly published memoir Driving to Treblinka: a long search for a lost father.  It would go on to rave reviews, awards and accolades. 

It tells the story of her father Ben Wichtel, a Polish Jew who was rounded up by the Nazis but jumped to safety from a train on the way to the Treblinka death camp. But later in life, now a father and husband, he would simply disappear. 

As one reviewer said this is a story that “will make all who read it a better human being”. It is an ode to remembering; to never stop fighting against forgetting. Reviewers declared it the best non-fiction book of the year and won both a 2018 Ockham Award for Non-fiction and the E H. McCormack Best First Book Award for Non-fiction. 

At Going West, Diana appeared in conversation with her long-time friend, colleague, and fellow writer Steve Braunias.

Steve regards Diana as a writer of genius and considered the book to be something truly exceptional. “Diana knew something of her Dad’s story, and not much more as a little girl growing up in Canada. Her Mum was a Kiwi.  The family immigrated to NZ in the 1960s, but Ben stayed behind, and Ben suffered, and Ben became a kind of ghost, alive, then dead, his story barely remembered. That’s the thing about life, it just gets on with it, but history has a way of creeping up on you and making demands, and Driving to Treblinka is a record of Diana’s journey to the past.  It’s profoundly moving... It’s beautifully written, it allows for a lot of black comedy, and it’s a wonderfully told story, from a writer who is really without parallel in this country.”