The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller

Soviet Espionage and the Cruelties of Stalin's Gulags

Peter Buck Feller (Author)

Online Access / Resources

The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller

Soviet Espionage and the Cruelties of Stalin's Gulags

Peter Buck Feller (Author)

Online Access / Resources

Ebook (Epub & Mobi) ₹2643.00 Ebook (PDF) ₹2643.00

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Description

Peter Buck Feller's father disappeared in Moscow in 1938, when Feller was just six months old. As a young boy he asked his mother about him, but his questions went invariably unanswered. Decades later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Feller embarked on a detailed search to reclaim his father.

His journey took him and his adult daughters to Moscow, Siberia, and Germany. He gained access to a now-declassified espionage FBI file, which contained an anonymous letter from a man who had been imprisoned in one of Stalin's gulags: "I plan to write a book about all what occurred to me during these dreadful ten years. The title of this book, I would like it to be 'The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller.'"

Feller was stunned. William Schwarzfeller was his lost father, for whom he searched, in one way or another, all of his life. He learned that his father had been an agent for Red Army Intelligence. He was arrested in 1938 and starved to death in a gulag in 1943. This new information led him to a host of discoveries, his mother's vast FBI file, and a story about his father on the front page of the Communist newspaper The Daily Worker.

Chapter 1 The Anonymous Letter
Chapter 2 Escape from Moscow
Chapter 3 FBI Alert
Chapter 4 Finding My German Family
Chapter 5 Recalled and Arrested
Chapter 6 The Brody Connection
Chapter 7 The Kremenets Massacre
Chapter 8 The Episcopalian Mafia
Chapter 9 Vorkuta
Chapter 10 Mission Manchuria
Chapter 11 The Last Gasp
Postscript The Mystery of F.P.D.

Product details

Published	30 Oct 2025
Format	Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition	1st
Extent	200
ISBN	9798881807580
Imprint	Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations	16 B&W
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Author

Peter Buck Feller

Peter Buck Feller is an independent historian with…

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 of the "The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, A Son and the CIA" and "The Con Queen of Hollywood: The Hunt for an Evil Genius"
The Last Gasp of William Schwarzfeller is a remarkable book. Peter Buck 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 Schwarzfeller 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
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 C Johnson, author of The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, A Son and the CIA and The Con Queen of Hollywood: The Hunt for an Evil Genius