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A review by hannahstohelit
The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War by David Nasaw
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
4.25
This book was very readable and very sobering. It really focused on one main line of inquiry on the topic- United Nations, American, and to a lesser extent British official actions and reactions related to the establishment of, administration of, and later dissolution of DP camps- and as such we did miss out on more multidimensional understandings of life within DP camps, which I'd have appreciated. That said, learning about the actions and motivations of these different governments and organizations, and how multifaceted political influences came to bear on each of their decisions regarding specific DP demographics, was definitely fascinating and often depressing. Watching Jewish DPs categorically be tossed around like a hot potato was unsurprising but still hard to read, as was seeing the horribly backward 1948 immigration act be constructed and passed.
My grandfather and several of his family members were Jewish DPs themselves, having survived the war in the USSR, and later ended up in the US, Palestine, and Argentina. I was possibly expecting from this book something that it wasn't equipped for- more insight into how Jews in DP camps lived and later left Europe, which might have given me background on my family's experiences- but I did end up learning a lot that I didn't know about non-Jewish DPs, who were in some ways just as much political footballs as the Jewish ones- but often played with by different people for different reasons. By prioritizing, as far as I could tell, official US and British reports of the camps, it could be hard to tell what was an objective account of conditions in a camp and what was meant to portray a particular person's or government's bias, but overall it was a really interesting read that will hopefully serve as a foundation for further learning on the subject.
My grandfather and several of his family members were Jewish DPs themselves, having survived the war in the USSR, and later ended up in the US, Palestine, and Argentina. I was possibly expecting from this book something that it wasn't equipped for- more insight into how Jews in DP camps lived and later left Europe, which might have given me background on my family's experiences- but I did end up learning a lot that I didn't know about non-Jewish DPs, who were in some ways just as much political footballs as the Jewish ones- but often played with by different people for different reasons. By prioritizing, as far as I could tell, official US and British reports of the camps, it could be hard to tell what was an objective account of conditions in a camp and what was meant to portray a particular person's or government's bias, but overall it was a really interesting read that will hopefully serve as a foundation for further learning on the subject.