An immi­gra­tion jour­nal­ist and her wife trace their fam­i­ly’s inter­twined past to unearth a his­to­ry of how hun­dreds of thou­sands of Pol­ish Jews sur­vived Hitler’s Holo­caust at the bru­tal hands of Stal­in – a sto­ry that sheds light on the endur­ing pow­er of hope and love.

Daniela Ger­son and her wife, Talia Inlen­der, 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, years in lim­bo in 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 escape path in the Sovi­et Union with most Pol­ish Jews who sur­vived; a group – some­times col­lec­tive­ly called ​“the Wan­der­ers” – 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.

This is 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 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.