ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- By the end of World War II in April 1945, with about two-thirds of European Jewry wiped out, Jewish survivors stepped out of the darkness in search of a place to call home.



Bestselling author Anita Diamant releases her latest historical novel, "Day After Night."



About 250,000 were considered displaced persons, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. A growing number of Jews -- before, during and especially after the war -- dreamt of helping to build a Jewish homeland in what was, at the time, British-controlled Palestine.



"Getting out of Europe, for a lot of people, felt like getting out of a graveyard," said bestselling author Anita Diamant, whose newest book focuses on this period. "Palestine was like over the rainbow, practically. It was somewhere that they knew they were wanted, at least by the Jewish community in Palestine, and it was a way to start over again in a completely new world."



Immigration quotas, however, meant that the more than 100,000 Jews who arrived between 1945 and 1948, when Israel was declared a state, did so illegally. Most of those who were captured were sent to internment camps in places like Cyprus.



But some Jewish prisoners ended up at a camp in Palestine called Atlit, located on the Mediterranean coast near the city of Haifa. Living in barracks and peering through barbed wire, these Holocaust survivors lived in limbo between their past and their future.



"Nobody else wanted them, so they wanted to go to Palestine," Diamant said. "There was this bottleneck. It was a big problem for the British, and it was also a public relations nightmare for the British."  Watch Diamant talk about her new book »



One night in October 1945, members of the Palmach -- an underground Jewish fighting force originally created to help the British fight the Nazis -- broke into Atlit and helped more than 200 prisoners escape. Central in this charge was Yitzhak Rabin, who would go on to be Israel's prime minister, and who was assassinated by a Jewish extremist in 1995.



Diamant, author of "The Red Tent," among other books, delves into the lives of four women who were part of this experience in her latest historical novel, "Day After Night." Carrying with them different wartime experiences, they are: a Polish partisan fighter, a Parisian woman who was forced into prostitution, a Dutch Jew who was in hiding, and a concentration camp survivor.



CNN sat down with Diamant, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, to talk about her latest book, the reason this story is relatively unknown and her attempt to stay out of Middle East politics.



CNN: How did you decide to focus on this specific story?



Diamant: The story found me, the way I think all of my novels found me. My daughter was in Israel on a semester program when she was 15, in 2000, and my husband and I went on the parents' trip. So we were on and off the buses with the kids as they did their field trips, and one of the field trips was in Atlit. We were given the tour, and we were told the story of this escape and about these so-called illegal immigrants. And I thought there's a novel.



CNN: This isn't a piece of Israel's history that many seem to know about. Why is that?



Diamant: American Jews, even people who know Haifa well, who know Israel well, it comes as a surprise to them. It's not one of the big bloody chapters. It was early in the conflict in terms of Jewish resistance. After this they started bombing train tracks and doing more overt military resistance to the British occupation, as it was known then. Part of the reason we don't know about it is that I think the Holocaust is still such a huge shadow, and it's still something we focus on. This is a relatively tender interlude. It's not the founding of the state, and it's not
What is the name of the bestselling author? Where some were imprisioned? Who is the bestselling autor? how many survivors immigrated? How many survivors immigrated illegally? How many survivors immigrated ilegally?
Anita Diamant internment camps in places like Cyprus. Anita Diamant 100,000 more than 100,000 100,000
question: What is the name of the bestselling author?, answer: Anita Diamant | question: Where some were imprisioned?, answer: internment camps in places like Cyprus. | question: Who is the bestselling autor?, answer: Anita Diamant | question: how many survivors immigrated?, answer: 100,000 | question: How many survivors immigrated illegally?, answer: more than 100,000 | question: How many survivors immigrated ilegally?, answer: 100,000