About V.M. Shel
Viktor Shel is an Author, Historian, Scientist, Engineer and Visionary who is fascinated with sharing stories of the Jewish Diaspora.
Viktor was born in Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, USSR during the peak of the Holodomor of 1933. He managed to survive the Nazi invasion of Ukraine, and after WW2 was over, he graduated from Odessa National Polytechnic University with a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering. During this time in his life, Viktor worked as an engineer in the machine tool industry in Odessa.
“The Jews who lived in the cultural centers of the Soviet Union were completely assimilated to the Russian culture. Typically, they had lost connections with the culture of their ancestors, as well as their religion and their language; and they may have completely dissolved into the Russian culture if the communist party and the government had not continued to tread the Jews with suspicion, and had not maintained the column “nationality” in the official Russian identification documents..” – Vikor Shel recounts in STORIES TOLD by an OLD JEW.
Viktor was finally able to escape in 1979, and brought his family to the United States, where he has made a better life ever since. Initially settling in St. Louis, after learning the language, Viktor was finally able to find his promise-land in Silicon Valley, where he found work as an Engineer and Scientist in the Semiconductor Industry. After bouncing around several tech companies and even a stint at running his own, he found the right fit at Applied Materials – where as a Scientist he developed new technologies and has collected many patents over his long career. While being an engineer and scientist in the high tech industry was a good career and enabled him to provide for his family, writing was always Viktor’s passion.
“During all my life I loved to hear stories about people’s lives. Someday I thought that I would like to put these stories down on paper and share these experiences so that next generation can have a greater understanding of what we went through. History repeats itself, and we cannot afford not to examine our collective past.”
He finally was able to put that dream into reality when in 1998 he published his first Novel – Young Leo describing a story of his grandfather who travelled as a ten-year-old boy across the 18th century Crimea in search of his mother. Since then Viktor published a collection of short Stories Told by an Old Jew, The Land of Milk and Honey about a Russian woman caught in the difficult situation of an illegal immigrant, and controversial Why he betrayed Jesus where he takes a different perspective on Judas Iscariot. In addition to novels, Viktor also likes to write short stories which have been published in various Russian language literary magazines.
He currently has four novels that have been translated into English and available via Amazon.com.
