Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 416 pages
Audiobook Length: 15 hours and 36 minutes
First Published: 2018
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Rachael’s Review
Georgia Hunter dives into her family history with the epic true story of the Kurc family. During World War 2, almost all of the Polish Jews were killed, but somehow the Kurc family were the lucky ones who all managed to survive. Hunter follows Nechuma and Sol Kurc and their five grown children as they are separated by war, facing unimaginable atrocities, and yet eventually reuniting together. It took me a while to really get into the story, but once I was hooked, I found this true story to be extremely moving.
Publisher’s Description
It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. The talk around the family Seder table is of new babies and budding romance, not of the increasing hardships threatening Jews in their hometown of Radom, Poland. But soon the horrors overtaking Europe will become inescapable and the Kurcs will be flung to the far corners of the world, each desperately trying to navigate his or her own path to safety.
As one sibling is forced into exile, another attempts to flee the continent, while others struggle to escape certain death, either by working grueling hours on empty stomachs in the factories of the ghetto or by hiding as gentiles in plain sight. Driven by an unwavering will to survive and by the fear that they may never see one another again, the Kurcs must rely on hope, ingenuity, and inner strength to persevere.
Quotes from We Were the Lucky Ones
The exercise of deciding where to go next is difficult. Because next most likely means a new forever.
What matters, she tells herself, is that even on the hardest days, when the grief is so heavy she can barely breathe, she must carry on. She must get up, get dressed, and go to work. She will take each day as it comes. She will keep moving.
There is nothing worse, not even the daily hell of the ghetto, than for a mother to live with such fear and uncertainty about the fates of her children.
About Georgia Hunter
Georgia Hunter is the author of the novel We Were the Lucky Ones, based on her own family history. She is a freelance copywriter, mostly for travel articles. Visit the author’s website →
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