Sep 8, 2026

The Wanderers

A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II

Hosted by Paul Lerner

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Summary

In The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II (Grand Central Publishing, 2026), 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—journeys that would, after a deceitful loyalty test from Stalin, put them on cattle cars to a Soviet Gulag, trap them for 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.

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Paul Lerner

Paul Lerner is Professor of History at the University of Southern California where he directs the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. He can be reached at plerner@usc.edu and @PFLerner.

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