By: Talia Rosenberg
When Anna Olswanger first began working with Rabbi Rafael Grossman in the early 1980s, she had no idea that a story he shared in passing would follow her across decades and eventually become the heart of a graphic novel. Their collaboration had begun as a much larger project. Together, they were shaping a Holocaust novel featuring a character inspired by the rabbi’s cousin, a leader of the Jewish resistance in the Bialystok ghetto. While outlining the story, Rabbi Grossman mentioned an experience he had in 1965 during a visit to the Soviet Union, when he met a young boy who had never left the room where he was born. The detail was so powerful that Anna and the rabbi included it in their draft. They managed to complete about one hundred pages before his other obligations pulled him away, and the unfinished manuscript retreated into storage.
Years passed. The novel was never finished. Then, in 2018, Rabbi Grossman died, leaving behind memories, teachings, and a box of papers that his daughter eventually sent to Anna. Inside that box lay the one hundred pages they had written all those years earlier. Anna found herself drawn back into the material and began digging through her old notes, only to realize she could no longer tell which parts reflected actual events and which were inventions added for the sake of storytelling. It was a mixture she could not untangle. What remained clear to her was the message the rabbi had carried with him throughout his life. Each of us can improve the world, even if it is only for a small number of people.
That idea became the emotional anchor for A Visit to Moscow. Because Anna was no longer able to separate fact from fiction, she could not write the book as nonfiction. Her editor suggested shaping it into historical fiction, and Anna embraced that direction. The final book now carries the credit Adapted by Anna Olswanger from a story told by Rabbi Rafael Grossman.
Anna wanted the story to live not only as a historical moment but also as something that felt bigger and more enduring. To help achieve that tone, she imagined the character of the adult Zev who appears in the book’s opening and closing scenes. His presence adds a sense of timelessness to the narrative. Zev grows up hidden away in one room in Moscow, where he learns to see the world almost entirely through imagination. His inner world becomes a kind of spiritual refuge that allows him to hold onto wonder even as the political system around him aims to extinguish it.
Anna crafted the opening scene with the adult Zev looking down at a landscape in Lebanon just after stepping on a land mine. He gazes at the earth from above and believes he is seeing it from heaven. But everything begins to fade from his memory. His name. His history. Then he hears a voice and follows it. He sees a man seated at his Shabbat table preparing to tell the story of a boy named Zev. By the end of the book, the adult Zev remembers everything and understands that being alive had always felt like heaven. Anna says she hopes that this final thought captures the timeless quality of both Zev’s life and the spiritual truth at the core of the story.
The illustrations by Yevgenia Nayberg add an entirely new layer to the narrative. Yevgenia grew up in the Soviet Union and understands its atmosphere in a way few artists could. Her artwork brings a luminous yet foggy light to the story, deepening the emotional impact without overwhelming the text. Yevgenia sometimes inserts wordless panels that subtly and powerfully shift the pace. Even though the main events take place during the summer, one of her winter scenes, filled with falling snow, conveys the slow passage of time without a single line of dialogue.
Anna explains that Yevgenia faced a unique challenge because the story contains minimal physical action. Most scenes involve only two or three people. Everything depends on emotional movement rather than external activity. Yet Yevgenia managed to shift the momentum through changes in composition and rhythm, guiding the reader through moments of stillness, tension, and quiet revelation.
Looking across Anna’s body of work, it becomes clear that she is consistently drawn to stories in which something hidden holds deep meaning. In Shlemiel Crooks, the hidden force is a talking horse who helps save a shipment of Passover wine. In Greenhorn, the secret lies within a small box guarded by a child who survived the Holocaust. In A Visit to Moscow, the hidden element is Zev himself. Rabbi Grossman once described the real Zev to Anna. He said the child never played, yet loved to imagine things. He wanted to know what synagogues in America were like, how Torahs were handled, and what other children did for fun. Despite the confinement of his life, he carried no resentment, something the rabbi attributed to the love and protection offered by his parents. Their choices were complicated and imperfect, yet they managed to preserve the boy’s emotional health and shield him from the influence of the communist government.
Anna hopes the book encourages readers to think about the risks people take to hold on to their beliefs. She would like readers to consider the principles they are willing to defend, even at personal cost. She also hopes readers will reflect on the meaning of the line about Zev, “He remembers being alive was like being in heaven,” and consider how life, even with its pain and imperfections, can carry a sense of spiritual beauty.
The epigraph of the book reads, “Whoever saves a single life is considered to have saved the whole world.” Anna invites readers to imagine the moments in their own lives when such a truth might come into play. A Visit to Moscow may be rooted in a specific time and place, yet through the author’s guidance, it opens into something larger, a reminder that small acts of courage often reach further than we ever expect.
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