When we look at the emergence of the diaspora of any ethnic group, we realize how important immigration is. To the Jews of the 20th century it was everything.  Some would migrate to America and become pillars of both capitalism and communism.  Some would migrate to Palestine and birth the state of Israel out of the desert.  Others would be left behind in Europe and suffer the last full measures of the holocaust.  They to would impact history, both by their courage and even by what they might have accomplished.

David Laskin, has written The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century. It'sabout his own family, but it's also a history that incorporate all the strands of this journey and the history of the Jewish diaspora in the 20th Century.

My conversation with David Laskin: