We Were The Lucky Ones

 I just finished reading a great historical fiction novel called We Were The Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter. The book starts in 1939 is is about 3 generations or the Kurz family who live in Radom, Poland. The Kurz family are close and get together off to celebrate Jewish holidays and meals. What they went through does not make me think they were lucky but in truth they were one of the very few Polish Jews to survive the Nazi invasion. All of them were starved. Some were beaten, arrested, and jailed. Some went to work camps. Some made it to Italy to join the Polish Army and join combat to take over a hill in northern Italy. Some had to pretend to be Catholic. One member of the family, when harassed by a lady landlord about his heritage, taped a Band-Aid to his penis and pulled his pants down for her to look at. He and his wife laughed pretty hard at the look on the landlady's face. One of the younger members of the family, a girl about 6 years, had to leave her mother to live in a Catholic orphanage for a while. Her mother came to check on her and found the orphanage had been bombed. The girl's mother and another man who came to check on his son heard voices. They spent 8 hours digging through the rubble where they found two nuns, some live children, and several dead children. The 6 year old girl had come down with an infectious disease, had a high fever, and nearly died. Several members of the family had children during the war. The author based her story on members of her own family. Her grandmother was one of the middle generations of the Kurz family. None of the family lives in Radom, Poland now. Some are in Brazil, some in the United States, and several in Europe. I thought this was an incredibly interesting story.