We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a semi-biographical novel of a Jewish family in Poland during World War II. The hardships and cruelty they endured are incredible, yet real. It is a large family, and as the title implies, they are the survivors, the lucky ones. Most of their fellow Polish Jews did not. Some were living in eastern Poland when Hitler and Stalin divided the country. They ended up in Soviet labor camps, not much better than Hitler’s camps. Others ended up in the walled-in ghettos the Germans created. One brother, Addy (we later learn short for Adolf) is in Paris at the outbreak of war and is inducted into the French army. Others at various times end up in Italy or Persia or Brazil.
The book is well-written although I thought it was going to be a slog at first. It was a book club choice, so obligatory, but it didn’t take long for me to become engrossed in the story. I’d give it a higher rating if it weren’t for the depressing nature of the story itself. It is unpleasant to yet again read of the atrocities the Germans (and the Russians and Christian Poles, too) committed against the Jews, against anyone. I couldn’t take more than an hour or so of reading when I had to switch to something else.