“The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller is a remarkable book. Feller narrates his quest to reconstruct the story of his father, who disappeared in Moscow in 1938 when Feller was only six months old. In the process, he tells important stories about the interwar Left in the United States, international espionage, Stalinist terror, and the Gulag. The Last Gasp of William Schwartzfeller is a gripping family saga that is as moving as it is profound in its depiction of some of the most important episodes of twentieth-century history.”
- Alan Barenberg, author of The Gulag: A Very Short Introduction and Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and its Legacy in Vorkuta
"When Peter Feller's father vanished in 1938 Moscow, the mystery of his absence became a silent backdrop to his life. Decades later, a cryptic letter from an anonymous gulag survivor reignites a search that spans continents and regimes. With the help of ex-KGB fixers, hidden archives and fading memories, Feller embarks on an extraordinary quest to resurrect the life and death of a man he never knew. What follows is a suspenseful, emotional excavation of Cold War secrets and family betrayal as Feller expertly pieces together the harrowing fate of a German-born Communist agent swallowed by Stalin's purges. The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller is a powerful meditation on memory, legacy and the lengths we go to seek the truth."
- Scott Johnson, author "The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, A Son and the CIA" and "The Con Queen of Hollywood: The Hunt for an Evil Genius"
Peter Buck Feller is a retired international trade lawyer with extensive publishing in his field, including his authoritative treatise, US Customs and International Trade Law Guide. In addition, he wrote an article reviewing the emerging nonfiction genre of books by children of spies, published in Foreign Policy (2012) magazine and an article on hunger strikes, published in The Pennsylvania Gazette (2024).
Feller is an independent historian with a particular interest in Soviet espionage around the Second World War and Stalinist system of gulags. He earned an A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania, a J.D. from The American University, Washington College of Law, and an L.L.M. from the George Washington University Law Center.
The son of a Red Army intelligence officer sent to die in a Siberian gulag discovers his father's KGB file, and a cottage industry of children-of-spies memoirs.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/08/declassified/
In 2011, I had occasion to read an old FBI espionage file that disclosed, much to my amazement, that my father had gone on a hunger strike in 1943 in one of Stalin’s infamous gulags. His name was William Schwarzfeller, and he was protesting the inhumane conditions in Vorkuta, a desolate forced labor camp 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Ultimately, he starved to death.
https://thepenngazette.com/hunger-strike/
