Moderate spoilers for We Were the Lucky Ones ahead.
The opening episode of We Were the Lucky Ones, the very first 3 installations of which are now streaming on Hulu, discovers the stretching Kurc household around a lively table in Radom, Poland. Joey King‘s Halina, captivating a love with household buddy Adam (Sam Woolfchuckles along with her bro Addy (Logan Lermanwho has actually returned home from Paris for Passover. Their moms and dads, Sol (Lior Ashkenaziand Nechuma (Robin Weigertpress eldest child Mila (Hadas Yaronabout the upcoming arrival of her very first kid. Their child Jakob (Amit Rahavenjoys in bringing his sweetheart, Bella (Eva Feilerhome to invest the vacation with his household, as does his older sibling, Genek (Henry Lloyd-Hugheswho has actually started dating Herta (Moran Rosenblatt. What the Kurcs do not understand is that their home town will quickly be under Nazi control– and this will be their last Passover together for the next years.
As World War II starts, the Kurcs will be displaced of Radom and displaced around the world– from Siberia and France to West Africa and Brazil. Throughout the Holocaust, each family member will dealt with different atrocities: Mila and her newborn child sustain extreme factory conditions before she ultimately stashes her kid in a Warsaw convent. Genek and Herta are condemned to a Soviet labor camp. The series information the household’s battle to make it through, and their traumatic efforts at reunification.
“By the end of the Holocaust, 90% of Poland’s 3 million Jews were wiped out,” the series advises audiences at the start. As the program’s title suggests, all instant members of the Kurc household are lucky adequate to live through the genocide and stay doggedly committed to reuniting.
Developed by Erica Lipez and directed by Thomas Kail, We Were the Lucky Ones is based upon the successful 2017 unique by Georgia Hunter, who likewise functions as co-executive-producer on the job. Hunter’s launching book was motivated by the real story of her household. “There were over 20 survivors in all, including my grandpa and his brother or sisters, moms and dads, cousins and in-laws,” she composes in a post on her site. “Together, they represented almost 7% of the overall number of Jewish survivors in their home town of Radom (the city’s flourishing prewar population of 30,000 Jews diminished to less than 300 after the Holocaust).”
While her household’s tale of survival is an incredible one, Hunter was not familiar with their predicament– or perhaps her Jewish heritage– till age 15. A year after her grandpa Addy passed away of Parkinson’s illness in 1993, Hunter was charged with interviewing her granny for a school English task. “I sat with my grandma Caroline and I will always remember that hour I invested with her, being in her home and finding that my grandpa was from this town called Radom, Poland, that he was among 5 brother or sisters, that he was raised in the Jewish faith, which I originated from a household of Holocaust survivors,” the author formerly informed the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Addy, an artist and engineer who later on altered his name to Eddy, didn’t indicate to keep his past “some huge trick,” Hunter remembered her grandma stating“however rather a chapter of his life he had actually picked to leave.” She included that “ending up being an American, altering his name, and constructing an effective profession … were his methods of carrying on, and of safeguarding his kids.”
Survivors’ regret might have likewise factored into her grandpa’s choice, stated Hunter in another interview“Perhaps the truth that the whole household endured undamaged– there were 22 in all– played a part because,” she discussed. “They were an analytical abnormality, which is incredibly lucky however not something they ‘d have boasted about. More than that, however, it merely wasn’t in my grandpa’s DNA to harp on the past. He had this extremely favorable, lively, forward-thinking outlook on life.”
No matter Addy’s thinking, Hunter has stated that learning more about her household’s history at an older age catalyzed her desire to discuss it. “I question typically how learning about my Jewish origins as a kid may have formed me as an individual,” Hunter stated“I think, nevertheless, that the shock of making the discovery later on in life triggered an extreme interest, and a pressing thirst for responses,” which she looked for to discover throughout a nine-year research study procedure that started in 2008 and covered 7 nations.
Hunter, who matured in Providence, Rhode Island, would talk to Holocaust specialists, see museums and archives, and even go to her forefathers’ home in Radom, Poland, which gets recreated in the series. “We checked out the apartment where my household lived, and I got chills running my fingers along a rusted mezuzah still stuck to the cement arched entryway,” she stated in a 2017 interview
In February 2008, Hunter took a trip to Paris, where Felicia— Mila’s child, who was a baby at the start of WWII and 6 years of ages by V-E Day– lived as among the only staying members of the Kurc household. “To this day, I’m still surprised at the lucidity with which Felicia had the ability to remember the information of her wartime experiences,” Hunter composes on her site: “the long coat her mom stitched as a part of a plan to get away the ghetto … the thunderous stomp of German boots patrolling simply inches from her hiding area at a consistent factory where her mom worked … the odor of peroxide the nuns at the Catholic convent utilized to bleach her auburn hair blonde, so she ‘d harmonize the other kids.”
Felicia’s estrangement from her mom plays out in both Hunter’s unique and the brand-new Hulu series. Later on episodes reveal Addy’s short engagement to a fellow guest while aboard a ship of European refugees getting away Europe for South America, and the time Adam, who was residing in Warsaw with Halina under incorrect documents, designed a method to protect the reality that he was circumcised from a property owner who implicated him of being Jewish.