by David Nasaw
First published 2021
David Nasaw examines the forgotten crisis of one million displaced persons stranded in Germany after World War II ended in May 1945. When Allied forces attempted repatriation, concentration camp survivors, former prisoners of war, slave laborers, and political prisoners from across Eastern Europe refused to return home or discovered they had no homes left. Jews, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians remained in camps on German soil. While many non-Jewish refugees eventually found new countries willing to accept them as workers, between 200,000 and 250,000 Jewish displaced persons remained trapped. The 1948 Congressional legislation that finally permitted immigration to the United States granted visas to significant numbers of war criminals and Nazi collaborators while denying entry to ninety percent of Jewish applicants. Nasaw reveals how these forgotten people navigated the transition from their shattered past toward an uncertain future, carrying trauma, fear, hope, and hidden truths with them.
Genres: history, 20th-century, world-war-ii, non-fiction, 21st-century, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, trauma
Setting: Eastern Europe, Germany
Period: 1945, 1948
672 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books
Content warnings: death, violence