A.J Sidransky Interview

RHP: THE INTERPRETER is obviously a deeply personal work for you. Can you go into that?

AJS: THE INTERPRETER is in fact a deeply personal work. Growing up in a family deeply affected by the Holocaust, I was surrounded with both people and stories that sounded more like the plot of a novel or a movie.  In some way, these experiences became ‘the norm’ rather than the exception to my experience.

There was one particular story, one particular experience, that caught my attention more than most others. That related to how my cousin Susan’s husband, Kurt Berlin, and his parents, Hersch and Berta Berlin, escaped Vienna, and then, stuck in Brussels, escaped from there as well.  I was also very close to both Susan and Kurt; I thought of them as a second set of parents.  Their stories fascinated me, solely for how unique they were, particularly Kurt’s.

Generally, I write in two genres, history and mystery. Obviously, there’s a Venn diagram and they can overlap. In either case, I write about ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances and how they react to them, overcome the adversity they’re faced with. What can be more extraordinary than the Holocaust. Millions woke one day to find out that they had been disenfranchised from the nation, through no actions of their own.

“Millions woke one day to find out that they had been disenfranchised from the nation, through no actions of their own.”

AJS: The Berlins were faced with exactly these extraordinary circumstances. They had the most compelling story I’ve ever heard. I had to write it. What’s most interesting is that when I first spoke to Kurt about writing his story, he said to me, “don’t write a biography or a memoir of me or my life. My story isn’t exceptional, it’s just one of many. I was lucky. I had very smart parents.” To the contrary, I have always felt their story was both unique and extraordinary. He told me I could use elements of his story in a novel, which is exactly what I did. The result was THE INTERPRETER.

RHP: In the introduction you mention several people you knew. How did you turn them into fictional characters?

AJS: That’s a really great question which gets to the heart of fiction writing. All writers are observers, and we watch whatever is going on around us all the time. It’s no joke when we warn our friends and family, ‘be careful what you say in front of me, it could end up in my next book.’

But turning real people into characters in a novel isn’t that simple. While we want our characters to be as real as possible, characters in a novel have to be a little more intensely focused than anyone in real life. Their senses and sensibilities — and hence, their actions — often have to be a little sharper than ours are on a day-by-day basis. 

The other issue in historical thrillers is story line, plot. There are literally millions of stories out there to be told, Holocaust or otherwise. The problem is that as compelling as they are, they might not be able to carry an entire novel. The truth is that happened with THE INTERPRETER. The real Kurt had a fabulous story of escape, of evading the Nazi dragnet. The problem I was faced with was that the real Kurt was twelve years old when the story unfolded. The story itself was compelling enough to carry a YA novel. I don’t write YA. I write adult mysteries and thrillers. As it happens, I had another connection, a former client from my time in the real estate finance business who had acted as an interpreter for the OSS just at the end, and after, WWII. He was the scion of a wealthy Jewish Viennese family, and spoke perfect German. I wove his story and Kurt’s together and created the character of Kurt Berlin that appears in the book. While they were both compelling stories, together they make for a much better story. Hey, it’s fiction, right?

RHP: What other research did you do?

AJS: I did a lot of other research. I had to learn about the experiences of children evacuated from Germany on Kindertransports. At the time I started working on this project some seven years ago, there were four such survivors living in my building in Washington Heights. I interviewed them all.

I knew about Operation Paperclip, wherein the American government and military brought Nazi scientists to the United States, but in learning more about that I uncovered other, lessor known operations to bring in ex-Nazis to work as spies against the Soviet Union in the coming cold war. That become the kernel at the heart of the book. The character of von Hauptmann is modeled after Klaus Barbi, the butcher of Lyon himself.

I also did a substantial amount of research about communism and communist uprisings in Hungary, Austria, and Germany, in the 1920’s. It was fascinating because my own grandfather was involved with the short-lived communist regime in Hungary in 1920. Much of that material ended up on the cutting room floor, but I’m using it in the next installment of the JUSTICE series, of which THE INTERPRETER was the first. The next book is titled THE INTERN; I am writing it now.

Additionally, I continue ongoing general interviews with people who lived through the Holocaust and other similar events of political upheaval. I often take small parts of their stories and use them in books and short stories, with the proper acknowledgement, of course.

RHP: The Holocaust figures in some of your other work. Tell us about that.

AJS: I come from a family that lost 112 relatives in the Holocaust. I am named after two victims of the death camps. As a child I would look at the framed photographs of my grandparents’ brothers and sisters that lined the long hallway that led from their front door into the heart of their house. I knew my grandmother’s siblings because they had all escaped. My grandfather’s hadn’t. As I grew older, I would start to ask questions as to what happened to these people.  Eventually, I learned that they died in death camps during WWII. 

My debut novel, FORGIVING MAXIMO ROTHMAN, also concerns Holocaust refugees. It was based on the experience of my uncle Max Grunfeld, my maternal grandfather’s only surviving sibling, and his escape from Nazi Europe to Sosúa in the Dominican Republic, where 854 Jewish refugees were saved from the Nazis. This story, his story, is told in the context of a murder mystery. My uncle’s real-life story of escape is contained in the backstory. 

My most recent novel, FORGIVING STEPHEN REDMOND, is a continuation of the tale told in FORGIVING MAXIMO ROTHMAN. It follows the Rothmans to the United States in the 1950’s and is told as a mystery surrounding a cold case. It was released January 16, 2021. I find combining a compelling murder mystery with historical fiction a very satisfying way to tell a story that might not otherwise carry a 300+ page novel.

RHP: Have recent events made the story more relevant?

AJS: Truth be told, recent events have made both THE INTERPRETER and the next book in the JUSTICE series, THE INTERN, very relevant. I began writing THE INTERPRETER in June of 2015. Every afternoon after I finished writing for the day, I would turn on the news and I would hear about something Trump or his people did or said that directly mirrored something I had written or read that day about the Nazis and their rise to power. It was terrifying. After releasing the book in the middle of the pandemic I began doing virtual book events. Audiences would often ask exactly this question and I would always answer, yes, we need to be forever vigilant against the rise of Fascism.

“…we need to be forever vigilant against the rise of Fascism.”

AJS: I have been working on THE INTERN, which is set against the execution of the Rosenbergs in 1953, over the past eighteen months. I’ve researched the red scares and McCarthyism at the same time that Trump tried to take us down the path to authoritarianism. It was as frightening as what I experienced writing THE INTEPRETER. We’re not talking about the finer points of tax or fiscal policy anymore. We are talking about the survival of democracy, just as we faced in Germany under Hitler and in this country under McCarthy’s influence. We must be forever vigilant and speak up for the truth!

RHP: What’s next?

AJS: I’ve got a bunch of things going. As I mentioned, I’m working on THE INTERN, the second book in the JUSTICE series, for which I project five books ending in 1973 when the Kurt character will be 50. These are all fiction. Kurt didn’t go on to become a CIA operative.

I’ve also got something of a real departure to be released late in 2021. It’s a novella and a series of six short stories set in the Dominican Republic in the present. It’s titled THE KING OF ARROYO HONDO. No Jews, no dead bodies!! I spend a month each winter in the DR with my best friend in his house in the barrio (not this year!) and I want to share the people and the culture with my readers.

I’m working on a book about the experiences of two brothers from Cuba, one a communist and the other not, based on real events. I expect that book to take about two years to research and write and release.

My most interesting project is called FIELDER’S CHOICE. It’s a novel about baseball, and about father’s and sons. I’m very excited about that and hope to get to begin the research this year.

Thanks so much to author A.J. Sidransky for speaking to us about his work. To learn more, visit his website at www.ajsidransky.com, and check out the rest of his books at his Amazon Author Central page.