An immigration journalist and her wife trace their family's intertwined past to unearth a groundbreaking history of the way most Polish Jews survived Hitler's Holocaust at the brutal hands of Stalin - a story that sheds light on the global refugee crisis and on the enduring power of hope and love.
Daniela Gerson and her wife Talia met at a picnic in Los Angeles, not knowing that 75 years earlier, their grandparents had left homes only blocks away from each other in a small Polish town, and fled east to Ukraine. The Gersons and the Inlenders would go on parallel odysseys of 5,000 miles to survive the Holocaust – one that would, after a deceitful loyalty test from Stalin, put them on cattle cars to a Soviet Gulag, send them to Siberia and Central Asia, and would end, after a decade on the run, with new lives built on secrets and lies.
For years, Daniela and Talia simply accepted this painful shared history as a sign that they were b'shert, meant to be. Their families' refugee past fueled their work: Daniela as an immigration journalist; Talia an immigration attorney. But as Daniela uncovered more, she realized that their grandparents shared this journey with more than 200,000 Polish Jews, sometimes collectively called "the Wanderers" – a group that is almost entirely absent from popular understanding of World War II. And unlike most Holocaust sagas that focus on the exceptionality of the Nazi genocide, theirs was also a universal story of refugees making impossible decisions when forced to seek safety, protect their children, and find new homes. A story that, to the dismay of the world, remains relevant each time a political upheaval wreaks havoc on individual lives.
Part genealogical detective story, part gripping history, part contemporary reporting on war-torn territories, The Wanderers chronicles Daniela's journey to unearth this past with her wife, and reveal its echoes in still-contested lands from Poland to Ukraine to Israel. The Wanderers is a groundbreaking narrative history, and a meditation on how a home left behind and a desperate journey to survive reverberates across borders and through generations. Daniela Gerson is an award-winning immigration reporter whose work has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, and Los Angeles Times. An associate professor of journalism at California State University, Northridge and editor-at-large at Zocalo Public Square, she previously worked as a community engagement editor at the LA Times and as a staff immigration reporter for the New York Sun. She lives in Los Angeles with her two children and her wife, a nationally recognized immigration attorney.
