Displaced Persons Growing Up American After the Holocaust

In this touching account, veteranNew York Timesreporter Joseph Berger describes how his own family of Polish Jews -- with one son born at the close of World War II and the other in a "displaced persons" camp outside Berlin -- managed against all odds to make a life for themselves in the utterly foreign landscape of post-World War II America. Paying eloquent homage to his parents' extraordinary courage, luck, and hard work while illuminating as never before the experience of 140,000 refugees who came to the United States between 1947 and 1953, Joseph Berger has captured a defining moment in history in a riveting and deeply personal chronicle.

Joseph Berger was born in Russia and came to the United States when he was five years old. Currently deputy education editor at The New York Times, he has also reported on religion and education for the newspaper and served as its bureau chief in White Plains. The author of The Young Scientists, Berger lives in Larchmont, New York, with his wife and daughter.