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New Memoir Details Polish Jews' Survival Through Soviet Exile During Holocaust
Journalist Daniela Gerson's book "The Wanderers" examines how nearly 300,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust by fleeing east to the Soviet Union in 1939. The blend of memoir, history and journalism follows her family's decade-long journey through labor camps, Central Asia and displaced persons camps.
May 15, 3:32 PM·3m read1 source
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Journalist Daniela Gerson has published a book that traces how nearly 300,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust by fleeing to the Soviet Union rather than remaining in Nazi-occupied Poland. The book, titled "The Wanderers," combines memoir, history and journalism to recount her family's experiences.
Gerson, an immigration reporter and professor of journalism at California State University, grew up believing her grandparents' story was uncommon. She later discovered it represented the majority experience among Polish Jewish survivors. The Nazis killed 90 percent of Poland's Jews.
Gerson's grandparents left the town of Zamość and spent a decade in exile, moving through Siberian labor camps, Central Asia, and displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany. Gerson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she knew her grandparents had survived in forced labor in Siberia but did not see their story reflected in Holocaust education.
Her own education focused on those who survived concentration camps, hid in attics and forests, or posed as Christians. The investigation began with Gerson's relationship with Talia Inlender, an immigration attorney. Gerson learned that Inlender's grandfather came from the same town, with their family homes about 100 steps apart across the town square in Zamość.
Both families followed nearly identical paths after crossing into the Soviet Union in fall 1939. Both families became refugees in what is now Lviv in western Ukraine. They faced hunger and disease, which killed Gerson's uncle Arik, the firstborn child of her grandparents Mottel and Peshke Gerson.
