"We Were the Lucky Ones": A Captivating Story of Survival and Hope During World War II

Billie Mitchell: The suffering and sacrifice is astounding, yet inspirational. I thought I knew this subject, but learned even more ! Beautiful.

United States on Sep 18, 2023

stef: Truly a miraculous story that keeps readers engaged and wondering what becomes of them. Turns a haunting tragedy into a lifetime of wonder

United States on Sep 08, 2023

Mrs K L Dean: I enjoyed this book and whilst books based on the experience of the Jewish community during the 2nd world war is alway a difficult read I know it's important to remember. The book is well written and you get a true sense of the family members and there strength and what they endured.

United Kingdom on Aug 08, 2023

Mrs. Susan C.: I enjoyed reading about the occupation in Poland in the second world War, but the author used too many descriptives when one word would have done...

United Kingdom on Aug 01, 2023

Margaret Aus: This was a truly amazing book about what one family went through to survive the Holocaust.

Australia on Jul 25, 2023

Christine E Smith: I bought for my husband but I read it too. We both enjoyed it. We have visited Auschwitz and are appalled at how the Jews were treated.

Canada on Jun 25, 2023

MAIN: The Kurc family was so big that you really get a sense of several different areas of the world during WW2. Everything from Brazil, Poland and Siberian work camps. Sometimes it's hard to remember who is who and I would have to go back and reread parts of previous chapters to remember. The most captivating story and one that initially I didn't think I was very invested in was Mila and Falicia (and maybe because I knew the chances of survival off the bat were slim I didn't want to be too invested). In the end their story is the most heart breaking and I cried imagining what this mother and child went through is absolutely unbelievable. They could have written a whole book on any one of these family members.

United States on May 25, 2023

Mandy: Once I was 1/4 through this book I could not put it down. I read until 3:30am this morning, and after sleeping, finished the book just after noon today.
It’s 3:30pm now, and I have to write this review.

The author’s writing is beautiful, and the book was edited well. I find it terribly distracting to find grammatical errors, but I don’t remember, for sure, seeing any in this book. There may have been one that I noticed, but I continued through it without a second thought because whatever was happening in the story at that moment was so engrossing that I couldn’t be bothered with the slight annoyance of a grammatical error. I may also have just read it wrong, in a hurry to find out what happened next.

I don’t usually cry over books(or movies). I may get teary-eyed every once in a while, but that’s rare.
This story had me choking back the tears a few times, my lip quivering in heartache, my stomach turning in fear and disgust. It was awful, but I couldn’t stop reading. I had to know what happened to each member of the Kurc family.

Following in chronological order, from just before the start of the war, each chapter of the book is written in...

United States on Jun 24, 2019

AdF: “We were the lucky ones” e “Noi i salvati” … due titoli, lo stesso libro. La versione inglese e quella italiana del titolo di questa opera di Georgia Hunter si completano. Essere tra i salvati, o sopravvissuti, all’eccidio degli ebrei durante la seconda guerra mondiale è questione di fortuna. Per quanto importante, l’argomento non è certamente dei più semplici da affrontare. L’autrice di questo libro l’ha fatto in modo semplice, diretto e realistico. Soprattutto realistico. E non poteva certo essere diversamente.

La Hunter, di origini polacche, nasce negli Stati Uniti nel 1978. Vive la sua infanzia, adolescenza, giovinezza come qualunque altro suo coetaneo. Fino a quando non scopre che la sua famiglia porta sulle spalle un peso enorme. Il peso del passato. A poco più di venti anni scopre di essere discendente di sopravvissuti all’olocausto. Quel delitto contro l’umanità di cui probabilmente aveva sempre solo sentito parlare, o che aveva studiato studiato, o visto in documentari e film … da quel giorno diventa parte integrante del passato di componenti della sua famiglia, persone che ama e con le quali ha vissuto e sta vivendo parte della sua...

Italy on Dec 17, 2018

LauraLMHS: Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention up front, but when I embarked upon this book I was expecting to read a story that would have fallen into the genre of “historical fiction,” i.e. a fictional account of a fictional family told against the backdrop of the all-too-real canvas of World War II. What I got instead was the astounding, near unbelievable, TRUE account of a Polish-Jewish family’s miraculous survival during this darkest time in human history. It is not until the epilogue/“Author’s Note” that we learn that the author’s Grandfather was in fact one of the main characters in her remarkable story.

The author acknowledges that her family elders, quite understandably so, were not eager to discuss the horrors of their past. Given the sparsity of details that were handed down to her, I imagine that a good amount of this epic tale can be chalked up to poetic license, so to speak, and that the writing of this tome entailed a good deal of “fleshing out” of a very skeletal handed-down (and oftentimes not first-hand) account. Nevertheless, the essence of this tale is true, and nothing short of miraculous, awe-inspiring and, indeed,...

United States on Apr 16, 2018