“Though their story is seldom told, most Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust did so by taking the road east, into the Soviet Union. In tracing the harrowing journey of her father’s escape, Mikhal Dekel provides a multilayered and nuanced account…Her exploration of the peculiar refugee world in 1940s Tehran—especially the tense relations between Jewish- and Catholic-Polish refugees in that city—makes the book an important and timely addition to the literature of the Holocaust and modern refugee history.” - Tom Reiss, author of The Orientalist and The Black Count

“An engrossing narrative that seamlessly weaves together a moving memoir, a gripping detective novel, and an erudite social history; heart wrenching in describing the agonies of the Polish Jews, heartwarming in bringing to life their defiance and the hospitality they received in places like Tehran. While voices of rancor and rage are using stereotypes and shibboleths to simplify the complexities of our human condition, Tehran Children is a must-read for all hoping against hope to cherish our common humanity.” - Abbas Milani, author of The Shah

“In this brilliantly conceived narrative, Mikhal Dekel illuminates a series of unexpected places absent from many maps of the refugee experience of the Holocaust. A striking book.” - Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World

“A revelatory history, a saga of flight and welcome, of death and head-down survival, a powerful narrative built for this moment. Dekel’s sweeping storytelling is marked by heartbreaking restraint and historical sensitivity.” - Charles King, Georgetown University, author of Odessa and Midnight at the Pera Palace

“Tehran Children is a gripping account of Holocaust survival unlike any other. Blending the genres of memoir, history, and travelogue, Mikhal Dekel combines the empathy of a daughter with the insight of a scholar. This is one of the greatest, largely untold stories of the Second World War.” - Tara Zahra, author of Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World