Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey

Discover the extraordinary true story of Polish-Jewish child refugees who escaped the Nazis and found refuge in Iran.

Rather than perish in Nazi-occupied Poland, more than a million Jews escaped east to the Soviet Union. 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, Mikhal Dekel fuses memoir with historical investigation in her book Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey, an 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.

A book signing follows the event.











When: Wed., Oct. 16, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Where: The 92nd Street Y, New York
1395 Lexington Ave.
212-415-5500
Price: $29
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Discover the extraordinary true story of Polish-Jewish child refugees who escaped the Nazis and found refuge in Iran.

Rather than perish in Nazi-occupied Poland, more than a million Jews escaped east to the Soviet Union. 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, Mikhal Dekel fuses memoir with historical investigation in her book Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey, an 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.

A book signing follows the event.

Buy tickets/get more info now