The Trail of WWII Refugees: From Poland to the Middle East

FAIN: HB-251059-17

Mikhal Dekel, PhD
CUNY Research Foundation, City College (New York, NY 10031-9101)

Completion of a book on Jewish refugees from Poland who fled Nazi forces and the communities in Iran and the Muslim Soviet Union that accepted them.

Of the roughly 350,000 Polish Jews who escaped genocide during WWII, approximately 230,000, two-thirds, survived as refugees in the Muslim Soviet Union--Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan--and (in smaller yet significant numbers) Iran. We do not often think of the story of the Holocaust as one of Jews surviving in Muslim lands, and we do not often think of the networks that were in place in these areas. Tehran Children tells the story of these networks and of the complex web of aid groups, conflicting and converging national interests, diplomatic maneuvers, and local attitudes towards these refugees. It studies the experience of both the refugee and the host nation; of foreign and local aid; of trans-national diplomacy; of hunger--its relief and its use as a weapon; and of memory: how refugees remember and are remembered by the Muslim nations with which they had come in contact. The book has been accepted for publication by W.W. Norton.

Associated Products

Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey (Book)
Title: Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey
Author: Mikhal Dekel
Abstract: "The extraordinary true story of Polish-Jewish child refugees who escaped the Nazis and found refuge in Iran. More than a million Jews escaped east from Nazi occupied Poland to Soviet occupied Poland. There they suffered extreme deprivation in Siberian gulags and "Special Settlements" and then, once "liberated," journeyed to the Soviet Central Asian Republics. The majority of Polish Jews who survived the Nazis outlived the war in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan; some of them continued on to Iran. The story of their suffering, both those who died and those who survived, has rarely been told. Following the footsteps of her father, one of a thousand refugee children who traveled to Iran and later to Palestine, Dekel fuses memoir with historical investigation in this account of the all-but-unknown Jewish refuge in Muslim lands. Along the way, Dekel reveals the complex global politics behind this journey, discusses refugee aid and hospitality, and traces the making of collective identities that have shaped the postwar world--the histories nations tell and those they forget."
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/tehran-children-a-holocaust-refugee-odyssey/oclc/1119730954
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781324001034
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

In the East: How My Father and a Quarter Million Polish Jews Survived the Holocaust (Book)
Title: In the East: How My Father and a Quarter Million Polish Jews Survived the Holocaust
Author: Mikhal Dekel
Abstract: Paperback edition of TEHARN CHILDREN, which was published two years prior. Contains a new epilogue by the author, an Afterward by Prof. Aleida Assmann, and a Q&A with Prof. Tara Zahra.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/in-the-east-how-my-father-and-a-quarter-million-polish-jews-survived-the-holocaust/oclc/1233267418&referer=brief_results
Secondary URL: http://mikhaldekel.com
Secondary URL Description: Author website: contains reviews and other information about the book.
Publisher: WW Norton
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 0393868451
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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