The Last Million

in shorts, with legs blue and raw. There were released German soldiers with their army packs and cut branches for walking sticks. You knew the displaced persons by the bulk of their clothing and the magnitude of their bundles. A man wearing two or even three suits, a woman wearing several dresses and a couple of coats and carrying more were not un- usual sights. None seemed to want food. Their want lay sadly deeper, and you could not touch it with your pity but could only surmise that it was for country and home and news of loved ones. Having once seen the wandering lost millions of Europe, you could never forget them, even as you could never fully know what thoughts were in their minds or what lumps were in their hearts. In the rain and wind, they were a steamy, abject porridge of human woe.
 
Barely clothed in ripped and ragged, oversized striped camp uni- forms, the Jewish survivors were distinguishable by their pallor, emaci- ated physiques, shaved heads, lice-infested bodies, and the vacant look in their eyes. You could see them walking down the street, Chaplain Her- bert Eskin of the U.S. Army recalled, some of them, with torn shoes, barefooted, with their long coats, the women, and the men with the paja- mas, you know, dirty, very short hair looking to talk to someone for aid. 4

The vast majority of Jewish survivors remained in the camps, too ill to leave on their own. The soldiers who encountered them tell the same stories of initial shock, then disgust, accompanied by alternating waves of pity, anger, and stomach-churning illness, followed by a body- and soul-wearying sadness that would not dissipate, a disillusionment with all things human, an enervating, pervasive disquiet that would remain with them for the rest of their lives.

scale. Much of what makes the book so absorbing and ultimately wrenching is his capacity to maneuver with skill between the nitty-grittiest of diplomatic (and congressional, military, personal) details and the so-called Big Picture. In cinematic terms, he s adroit at surveying a vast landscape with a soaring crane shot, then zooming in sharply for a close-up of a single face as it crumples... Nasaw takes pains to avoid facile comparisons between the history he recounts and the current global moment, with its our own seas of refugees. As his calmly passionate book makes plain, however, one would need to be willfully covering one s eyes not to see how then bleeds into now.   Adina Hoffman, The New York Times Book Review

Insightful and eye-opening Nasaw is a humane writer with a knowledge of his subject that is broad and deep. Jim Zarroli, NPR.org
 
Based on an avalanche of research, sweeping, searching, and filled with intimate details, The Last Million tells the enduringly relevant and not well-known story of how political differences between the United States and the United Kingdom, Cold War calculations, ethnic and religious conflicts, and antisemitism trumped humanitarian considerations, turning what should have been the primary mission upside down and victimizing those who had suffered the most. Glenn C. Altschuler, The Jerusalem Post
 
Tells of the last million who had been confined to refugee camps for five years....Through great research, Nasaw helps the reader understand the complexity of permanently relocating refugees to a new country. Seattle Times

Nasaw, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, has once again produced an extraordinarily well-researched book that is well worth reading.   Christian Science Monitor

Nasaw does a masterful job of bringing to light the lasting individual and global consequences of policies and attitudes surrounding the last million A thought-provoking, highly recommended perspective on a complex and largely overlooked people and period of modern history. Library Journal, starred review
 
[Nasaw] provides a characteristically thorough and impressively researched account of the roughly one million displaced persons who found themselves stranded in Germany after the end of the war While delving into the weeds of political compromise and legislation, Nasaw never loses sight of the hopes and struggles of the people at the center The Last Million showcases Nasaw s deft handling of complexity not only the number of global controversies that the Displaced Persons issue fed into, but the morally complex issues of collaboration. Shelf Awareness

A richly detailed account of what happened to the one million Holocaust survivors, former slave laborers, and POWs who found themselves in Germany at the end of WWII . . . Nasaw skillfully and movingly relates a multilayered story with implications for contemporary refugee crises. This meticulously researched history is a must-read. Publishers Weekly, starred review

"[M]asterful...A searching, vigorously written history of an unsettled time too little known to American readers." Kirkus Reviews, starred review