Author: Georgia Hunter
Publisher: Viking
Pages: 416
At first, I
wondered about the appropriateness of titling a book set during the Holocaust We
were the Lucky Ones.
But that is exactly that the Kurc family, resident in
Radom, Poland, at the start of the war in March 1939, turned out to be. Despite
suffering the worst excesses, this family emerged alive through the War, ready
to make a fresh start in the post-war world.
Each chapter
of this story is told from the third person present tense point of view of a
different family member.
It is in this manner that we meet Sol and Nechuma
Kurc, a prosperous Jewish couple, and their children. Eldest daughter, Mila, is
married to Selim; they have a two-year-old daughter, Felicia. Son Genek is
married to Herta. Addy, still single, is working in Paris, Jakob is in love
with Bella, and youngest daughter, Halina, is in a relationship with Adam, the
family’s tenant.
When World
War II breaks out, the men, Selim, Genek and Jakob, are conscripted to fight.
Jakob asks Bella to join him in Lvov where they live, and she does so, nearly
losing her life as she makes the perilous journey. Those left behind are
assigned new jobs.
Halina is sent to pluck beets at a beet farm and Mila to sew
clothes at a garment factory, where she goes to work, with Felicia strapped to
her chest. At the factory, the child plays under the table all day. Meanwhile, Sol
and Nechuma work in a cafeteria. Nechuma smuggles home potato peels to season
their meal.
And then
there comes a day when the family is assigned to a new shabby home while their
spacious five-bedroom apartment is usurped by Germans. The Kurcs may only take
their clothes and valuables.
Meanwhile,
in France, Addy is sent a summons for conscription. He secures a time-bound
visa to travel to Brazil. But the ship that he is travelling in is refused
entry into Brazil because of the political picture of the continent has altered
in the months in the interim period.
The ship docks at Casablanca, where he
gets into a relationship with Eliska, a rich Jewish girl.
At the end
of each chapter, we get the historical events that transpired then, the ones
that led to the War and saw Jews being persecuted and subsequently exterminated
in concentration camps. Each chapter shows us things getting worse.
Genek and Herta
are taken away from their home in the middle of the night and transported by
train over the next 42 days in horrific conditions to Siberia. There they are
made to work felling logs, surviving on meagre rations and facing Siberia’s
horrible winters. It is here that Herta becomes pregnant and gives birth to
baby Jozef.
Meanwhile, Halina
joins Adam, with great difficulty, just as Bella had once done. Around this
time, Bella discovers that her sister, Anna, and her husband are killed. Living
in Lvov is fraught with danger, and so Jakob, Bella and her cousin, Franka
leave for Radom again. Adam is taken to a work camp. Halina gets him released,
using her grandmother’s silver cutlery as a bribe.
Each member
of the family lived through such a harrowing time, and for long years, it
seemed that things only got worse. I kept looking at the timeline, longing for
1945, when the Allies would win and the War would be over.
Portions of
it made for difficult reading. I couldn’t read beyond these parts, imagining
the plight of these people.
During the
course of Genek and Herta’s terrible journey to Siberia, we read the
heartrending account of the mother who sat for days with a dead baby in her
arms, and stopped eating when the baby was thrown out by the Soviet soldiers.
Later, the soldiers threw her out of the train too.
I was also upset by the part
in which little Felicia, who has been hidden in a sack and told to act like a statue during a Nazi inspection of the factory is nearly discovered by them.
There is so
much that members of this family went through at the concentration camps. The holes in the
ground that served as toilets. The demeaning lack of privacy. The anxiety of
not knowing whether one would survive from one minute to another.
In the midst
of difficulties, things start looking up for Addy. He finally reaches Brazil
and after seven months of doing odd jobs, gets his work permit and a job. He
and Eliska grow apart as he misses his family and Eliska fails to understand
his sorrow.
Jakob and
Bella return to Radom. As the political situation alters, allies turn into foes
and vice versa, worsening the plight of the Jews depending upon where they find
themselves.
Genek, Herta
and Jozef are released by the Soviets and taken by train to Kazakhstan.
Hitler
allows some Jews to emigrate to America. Mila and Felicia are on the first train,
on the first leg of their long journey. But the train is led to a wilderness where
the passengers are told to dig their own graves.
Jakob and
Bella get a job in a factory outside Radom, in German-occupied Poland.
As the
political situation worsens, the most fragile of securities slips away. All the
siblings make efforts to help each other. Of them, Halina is the feistiest of
the lot.
But my heart
went out to Mila and Felicia. Mila’s circumstances were truly heartrending as
she took the biggest risks to safeguard herself and her child. And Felicia
herself, seeing such horrors at her age.
As their
bodies waste away for lack of food, the author tells us of Bella, Her
cheekbones grew more pronounced, and under her shirt, her ribs jutted from
beneath her skin like a keyboard made up of only sharps and flats.
It was only
at the end of the book that I became aware that it was a true story and that
the author is the granddaughter of Addy. Truly a beautiful and touching
recountal.
The writing
was good, and the descriptions more than adequate. The author could so easily
have resorted to using abusive language against the hateful Nazis. But she
keeps to the facts, and gives us this fictionalized retelling of historically true
events.
I was glad
to read this one through to the end.
While we
remember the millions that died in the Holocaust, we can rejoice with this
family that lived to give thanks to God for seeing them through the worst.
(I got a free ARC from FirstToRead).
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