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Diana Wichtel (born 1950 in Vancouver) is a New Zealand writer and critic.[1] 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.[1] When she was 13 her mother brought her to New Zealand to live, along with her two siblings.[2][3] Although he was expected to follow, she never saw her father again.[4][1][5][6] The mystery of her father's life took years to unravel, and is recounted in Wichtel's award-winning book Driving to Treblinka.[7][8] The book has been called "a masterpiece" by New Zealand writer Steve Braunias.[7] 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."[8]
Driving to Treblinka won the Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General non-fiction at the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.[9][10]
Wichtel was appointed staff writer at the New Zealand Listener in 1984.[7] She joined the magazine from the English department at the University of Auckland,[7] where she gained a Master in Arts, and also tutored.[11] 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."[2] Wichtel was still writing for the Listener when its then publisher announced the magazine's closure in April 2020.[12] [13]
The New Zealand Herald's weekend magazine Canvas welcomed Wichtel as a fortnightly columnist in October 2020.[14]
Wichtel has won numerous awards for her journalism:
