Julius Wachtel, the son of Holocaust survivors, was born in Italy, where his Eastern European Jewish parents resettled following their liberation from the Nazi regime. The family soon left for Argentina. Ten years later they emigrated to the U.S. Julius served with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, earned an undergraduate degree in policing and embarked on a Federal law enforcement career. He completed a master's degree in criminal justice at Arizona State University and in 1982 took a break in service to earn a Ph.D. in criminal justice at the State University of New York at Albany. But Julius had another interest. His mother was freed from a concentration camp by Soviet troops, and throughout his adult life he indulged his curiosity about the fearsome ""Reds"" by devouring Russian literature. The works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn led to an interest in the Soviet period, and especially in the abuses of Stalin's regime. Following his retirement from the Federal government Julius began a second career as a lecturer in criminal justice at California State University Fullerton. He developed and taught a course on Soviet justice that includes a staged reenactment of the Moscow show trials. Julius also participated in a visiting scholar program at the Law Academy of Ukraine. These experiences helped set him on the decade-long project that became Stalin's Witnesses. He retired from this position in January 2018. Julius and his wife reside in Garden Grove, California. Their daughter, an NYU grad, resides in Brooklyn.
Wachtel's lively fictional account offers a fresh look at the cruelty of Stalin's repression from the vantage point of one of its victims, an honest communist official and spy cast in the role of witness to sabotage at one of the three show trials of the Great Terror. The fascinating life story of Vladimir Romm encapsulates much of the Soviet experience, and the reader's natural sympathy with this attractive figure gives his cruel fate added poignancy. A powerful indictment of Stalinism and a great read besides! --Peter H. Solomon, Jr., Professor of Political Science and Criminology, University of Toronto, author of Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies Series) and Courts And Transition In Russia: The Challenge Of Judicial Reform Jay Wachtel's Stalin's Witnesses' is historical fiction at its best a gripping story that sheds light on one of the most shocking and egregious travesties of justice in modern times. With verve and brilliantly constructed dialogue to fill gaps in the historical record and to bring the historical characters to life, Wachtel chronicles the story of five individuals who were forced to testify against their fellow Communists and in so doing condemned not only the defendants but also implicated themselves in farfetched crimes. He shows what happens when ideology enslaves human beings, hollows out their dignity, and changes their dreams into nightmares. Along the way, he showcases the duplicity and hypocrisy of fellow travelers and others who for various reasons stood by, even lent credibility to the sham proceedings. Above all, he conjures up the spirit of Stalinism a frightening reality that stills impacts the Russian people. --Dennis J. Dunn, Professor of History and Director of the Center for International Studies, Texas State University, Author of Caught Between Roosevelt and Stalin: America's Ambassadors to Moscow