Join us in person on December 12 with author David Nasaw as he discusses his latest book, “The Last Million,” which tells the little-known saga of the one million refugees left behind in Germany after WWII. 

In May 1945, after German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, they left behind a nation of ruin, along with millions of concentration camp survivors, POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and Nazi collaborators. British and American soldiers attempted to repatriate the refugees, but more than a million displaced persons remained in Germany: Jews, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and other Eastern Europeans who refused to go home or had no homes to return to. Most would eventually be resettled in lands suffering from postwar labor shortages, but no nation, including the United States, was willing to accept more than a handful of the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany. A masterwork from acclaimed historian David Nasaw, “The Last Million” tells the gripping but until now hidden story of postwar displacement and statelessness of the Last Million, as they crossed from a broken past into an unknowable future, carrying with them their wounds, their fears, their hope, and their secrets. Here for the first time, Nasaw illuminates their incredible history and shows us how it is our history as well.

David Nasaw is the author of “The Patriarch,” selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year and a 2013 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Biography; Andrew Carnegie, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, the recipient of the New-York Historical Society’s American History Book Prize, and a 2007 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Biography; and The Chief, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize for History and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for Nonfiction.

This program is supported by the Ilona Irene Rosenschein Holocaust Education Endowment Fund (IIRHEF) at the Boulder JCC. This fund was launched in 2019 with a generous donation from Larry Cohn to honor Irene and her contribution to Holocaust education in the Boulder community. 

This is a free program, but advance registration is required. We encourage you to read the book in advance of the talk. Books are available from the Boulder Bookstore for curbside or USPS delivery. Books will also be available at the event.

Event information and registration can be found HERE. 

This program will be held in person at the Boulder JCC (as well as live-streamed) following all of our Health & Safety Protocols. As of November 1, 2021, we are implementing a Vaccination Policy for program participants that varies by program location/attendance. Please familiarize yourself with these protocols prior to the event. As always, all Health & Safety protocols are subject to change.