We Were the Lucky Ones

Caroline urges Addy to hurry to meet his family. She and Addy have just had a baby named Kathleen, who was slightly underweight, so they are staying in the hospital. Addy feels exceptionally grateful to his wife, who not only helped him find his family by writing to the Red Cross, but also cashed in her war bonds to pay for his family’s passage to Brazil.

On board the ship are Nechuma, Sol, Halina, Adam, Herta’s brother Zigmund, and a cousin named Ala who also survived the war. Genek, Herta, Józef, Mila, Selim, Felicia, Franka, her mother Terza, and her brother Salek are all coming on a separate ship to Rio: “Fifteen relatives. Addy can’t quite digest the reality of it all” (376). For so many years, Addy yearned to find his family and bring them to Rio, and now it is happening.

Once they connected through the telegram, Addy convinced his family to move to Brazil, which has recently opened its borders to refugees. Addy prepared for his family to join him, finding them apartments and furniture: “But nothing—nothing at all in the world, he realizes—can prepare him for what it will be like to see his family in the flesh” (377). Addy thinks back to the events of the past, from the time he was in France at the beginning of the war and through all that has transpired since. He wonders how he will even begin to tell his family about his life.

Addy arrives at the port and excitedly walks by the customs building. He sees a transport ship coming into the port and scans the tiny passengers on the bow, though they are too far away to see in detail. Addy cannot bear to wait any longer, and he pays a fisherman to lend him his rowboat. He rows out to the ship and miraculously hears his mother call his name:

And then he sees her, waving a handkerchief over her head, just as she had the day he left her at the train station: his mother. And next to her, his father, pumping a cane up and down as if poking holes in the sky, and next to him, his sister, waving frantically with one arm, holding a large parcel in the other—a baby, perhaps (379).

The Kurc family gathers together in Addy and Caroline’s home for the first Passover they have celebrated together since the war. Only Jakob, Bella, and Victor are not with them, though Jakob writes often and sent a telegram today to convey greetings.

Sol arranges the table with his Haggadah and prayer books as Nechuma and Mila prepare the meal and Genek pours wine. Nearby, Józef and Felicia play together. Adam sits with his 1-year-old son, Ricardo, who was born in Naples. Adam and Halina decided to “lose” his birth certificate and claim he was born in Brazil, believing it better to leave those European roots behind. When Adam learned that his family perished in Auschwitz and all of Halina’s family was in Brazil and the US, they opted for no more ties to Europe.

Caroline shows Herta how to swaddle her 2-week-old baby Michel, explaining that Nechuma showed her how with baby Kathleen, now 10 months old. Addy and Halina look through records, choosing what to play. They settle on a Brazilian composer.

The family sits around the table for dinner. Nechuma offers Caroline the honor of lighting the candles while she recites the opening prayers. Sol looks around the table and begins the blessings. Overwhelmed with happiness and gratitude, he thanks God for keeping them alive, for sustaining them, and for bringing them to this special time, as they celebrate the time of their liberation.

Herta smiles as Genek puts his arm around her, and they both look at their new baby. Herta realized she was pregnant again after finding out her parents, sister, brother-in-law, and niece all died in Bielsko. Herta was deeply despaired, wondering if she could have done something to save them and agonizing that Józef would never know his grandparents: “Her pregnancy had helped her to see straight again, to draw upon the resilience that had gotten her through her years as an exile in Siberia, as a new mother alone in Palestine, awaiting news from the front” (385). They named the new baby after Herta’s father.

Felicia, as the youngest person at the table, recites the four questions. Sol continues the blessings, and the family begins their feast. After dinner, Sol enjoys hiding the matzah for Felicia and Józef, at their first Pesach. After prayers, singing, and psalms, Sol proudly looks upon his family and announces that the Seder is complete. The family continues singing, and Mila is encouraged to take her place at the piano. Halina plays next, then Addy, and the family dances and laughs.

Late that night, Addy thanks Caroline, who not only hosted the evening, but got a call through to Jakob in Chicago so that the whole family could speak to him. Caroline replies that Addy has a beautiful family. 

Hunter shares her memories of her grandfather Eddy (who was Addy Kurc). She always thought of him as completely American, though he used unfamiliar sayings. She admired his devotion to music and the fact that he spoke seven languages. However, she grew up without knowing that her grandfather was born in Poland and spent the war not knowing if his family members were alive. She was also unaware that his name was Adolf, though everyone called him Addy: “My grandfather didn’t keep these truths from me intentionally—they were simply pieces of a former life he’d chosen to leave behind” (391). Like many immigrants, Addy reinvented himself in his new home. He focused on the future and the present, not the past.

When Hunter was 14, her grandfather died of Parkinson’s disease. The following year, Hunter received a school assignment to research a family member. She interviewed her grandmother Caroline to learn about her grandfather’s life story. It was then that Hunter heard about how her grandfather grew up in Radom and was the only member of his family to escape from Europe at the start of World War II. Hunter also learned about how Addy reunited with his family after the war in Rio: “Somehow, they’d all miraculously survived a war that annihilated over 90 percent of Poland’s Jews and (I would later discover) all but about 300 of the 30,000 Jews from Radom” (391).

Addy and Caroline moved to the United States, where Hunter’s mother and uncle were born. Addy changed his name to “Eddy Courts” and became an American citizen. He became a successful businessman and left most of the customs of his early life behind. This was all a revelation to Hunter. She realized that many of her grandfather’s traits that she thought of as quirks could be attributed to his having grown up in Europe. Hunter wanted more details about her grandfather’s family and about his upbringing, but her grandmother told her that she did not know much about that.

Years later, Hunter’s mother hosted a Kurc family reunion, and family attended from all over the world. The cousins shared stories, in many languages. Hunter also enjoyed the stories from her aunt and uncle about her grandfather. Her cousin Józef shared stories about his father Genek. Others shared amazing family stories of incredible experiences: “My first thought was, Why am I just learning these things now? And then: Someone needs to write these stories down” (394). That someone would become Hunter herself, years later.

Hunter relocated when her mother’s cousin Felicia spoke near the end of the evening. Hunter thought Felicia seemed more reserved and that sharing her memories seemed difficult since she had lived through the hardest years of the war. Felicia told the group that their family should not have had so many survive: “‘It’s a miracle in many ways,’ she finally said, looking out toward the tree line. ‘We were the lucky ones’” (395). Those words stayed with Hunter and became the title of this book.

Hunter describes how she eventually went to Radom to learn about what had transpired there for pre-war Jews and the Kurc family. None of the family ever returned to Poland after the war.

Mila and Selim stayed in Rio, where Felicia became a doctor and then moved to Paris. After Selim died, Mila went to live in Paris as well. She stayed in touch with the nun who saved Felicia during the war and nominated her to receive a Righteous Among the Nations award posthumously.

Halina and Adam settled in São Paulo, where they shared a house with Nechuma and Sol. Genek and Herta lived nearby. Halina remembered how Herr Den had saved her life, and she sent him checks regularly for years. Ricardo was in his forties before he learned his real birthday and that he was actually born in Naples.

Jakob and Bella (whose real name was Maryla; Hunter changed it because she feared that readers would be confused by how close Maryla was to Mila) moved to Skokie, Illinois. They remained close to Addy and Caroline, who settled in Massachusetts.

Nechuma and Sol’s descendants became scattered throughout Brazil, the US, France, Switzerland, and Israel. Although they are different in many ways, “there is a shared sense of gratitude, for the simple fact that we are together. There is love. And always, there is music” (398).