DANIELA GERSON – THE WANDERERS

An immigration journalist traces her family’s past to uncover how hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews survived the Holocaust

What if the story that bound your family to the person you love most was also part of one of the least-told chapters of Holocaust history?

At this special book talk, Daniela Gerson discusses The Wanderers, her sweeping work of history, memoir, and reportage. Gerson met her wife, immigration attorney Talia Inlender, at a picnic in Los Angeles — unaware that 75 years earlier their grandparents had lived blocks apart in the same Polish town before fleeing east to Ukraine. Their families would go on parallel 5,000-mile odysseys to survive the Holocaust — journeys that included cattle-car deportations to Soviet Gulags, years in limbo in Central Asia, and a decade of displacement before rebuilding new lives.

For years, Daniela and Talia understood this painful shared history as beshert — destiny. But as Gerson dug deeper, she uncovered a larger, largely overlooked story: that many Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust did so along this Soviet escape route — sometimes collectively called “the Wanderers” — a history strikingly absent from popular memory.

Part genealogical detective story, part epic history, and part contemporary reportage, The Wanderers traces Gerson’s journey to uncover this past and its echoes in today’s refugee crises — a meditation on exile, survival, and the impossible decisions families make to protect their children.

In conversation with Sasha Khokha, host of The California Report Magazine.

Our community partner for this program is Books Inc.

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