Julius WachtelJulius 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. Julus 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. Read More Read Less