The Unwanted

Vast refugee movements signify hundreds of thousands of people homeless and in despair. For most of our own century, Europe saw the greatest tide of uprooted humanity, with millions of people torn loose from their homes and forced to flee abroad. The Unwanted presents the first comprehensive picture of the astounding dimension of the refugee problem in twentieth century Europe.

While a considerable portion of the book is devoted to the dislocation of the Nazi era, the volume covers everything from the late nineteenth century to the present, encompassing the Armenian refugees, the Spanish Civil War emigres, the Cold War refugees in flight from Soviet states and much more.

Marrus argues that these huge refugee inundations represented a terrible new page in human history, presaging what we see today in parts of the Third World.