Book 'The Wanderers' Chronicles Polish Jewish Survivors Who Fled to Soviet Union

Daniela Gerson’s new book, “The Wanderers,” explores the overlooked history of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust by fleeing east to the Soviet Union rather than facing Nazi concentration camps. Gerson, a journalism professor, discovered that her grandparents’ journey from Zamość, Poland, to Siberian labor camps and Central Asia was shared by nearly 300,000 Jews, constituting the largest group of Polish Jewish survivors. The narrative intertwines with that of her wife, Talia Inlender, whose family followed a nearly identical path after their grandfathers, neighbors in Zamość, crossed into the USSR in 1939. Both families endured forced labor, hunger, and displacement through Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan before eventually reaching displaced persons camps in post-war Europe. The book highlights how these survivors were initially trapped by Stalin’s deportation policies after attempting to return to Poland, only to be liberated when Hitler invaded the USSR. Ultimately, the families emigrated to Israel and the United States, preserving a unique chapter of Holocaust survival often absent from mainstream historical accounts.