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In August 1948, 545 passengers boarded an overcrowded, clapped-out vessel in Marseilles to face an uncertain future in Australia and New Zealand. They came from displaced persons camps in Germany, death camps in Poland, labour camps in Hungary, gulags in Siberia and stony Aegean islands. There were those who had been hunted by the Nazis and those who had welcomed them; those who had followed the Communists and those who had fled them. Diane Armstrong set sail on the Derna with her parents when she was nine years old. Like a detective searching for clues, she has located over a hundred of the passengers. Through their recollections and memorabilia, as well as archival documents, she has recreated the voyage and traced what became of their hopes and dreams. The result is the unique portrayal of a migrant ship and its passengers.… (more)
User reviews
The voyage is a bit of a disaster - the ship is cheaply and poorly equipped, and the passengers are crowded into cabins.
After relating events of the voyage in the first half of the book, the author (who was a 9-year old child on the ship) makes contact with many of the passengers and tells of their lives after getting to Australia and NZ. There were many success stories, particularly in the next generation, but each person recovered from their awful war time experiences in their own way.
Diane Armstrong lets the people tell their own stories, with limited interjections. I loved it and was moved by it.
Read Nov 2016