We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
2017
Weight: 16 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating to Goodwill
It is no surprise that when you pick up a book about the Holocaust you will leave that book with a deep, dark, gut wrenching sickness. It is impossible to truly grasp or imagine that many people being starved, tortured, and brutally murdered by their neighbors. It is devastating and, no matter how much is written about it, makes no sense. I have read the research and the studies showing that people everywhere are capable of this, and I believe it, but it just does not make sense. The world is changing in so many scary ways. There are countries all over the world going more conservative and being led by angry, shouting, womanizing leaders who have disgust for entire groups of people. You never want to demean what people went through in World War II by comparing modern day situations to what happened then arbitrarily, but sometimes the mirrored experiences are frightening. It is hard not to think of one when reading about the other.
As a child, we were taught about the Holocaust with the idea that if we could learn about it we could ensure it would never happen again. In college, my eyes were opened to other genocides happening in other countries. I struggled to know what I could do as an American about Rawanda. About Darfur. Now, I am hearing the horror stories coming out of immigration detainment centers, and there has been an explosion of gun violence aimed at all people, but pointedly at the Jewish, the LGBTQ latina community, black people in their own churches. Hatred is bubbling up in these very explosive and loud ways. Meanwhile, our President is coming up with travel bans, transgender bans, insulting the disabled publicly, talking about sexually assaulting women openly. We have placed yet another man accused of sexual assault in the highest court in our land.
The very title of this book digs into your psyche. You follow a whole family through the Holocaust, predominantly in Poland, and you get attached to them quickly. They see terrible things and suffer in a variety of ways. You see the woman digging a grave for herself and being told to dig one for her child as well. The mother who cannot account for all her grown children and their children. The grandfather who worked hard to build a life for himself and those he loves just to have it all stripped from him. And yet, many of them make it out alive, and they are truly "the lucky ones." Thinking of them as lucky is soul crushing in and of itself.
This is a novel based on a real family, and it is reader friendly in that it is character driven and not bogged down with details. I think that the style the author uses has made it to where people of varying ages and temperaments could pick it up, read it, and find themselves moved. One thing I wonder when I read all of these books is when do you get out? When is it too late? There is a lot of talk about staying and fighting, but would you do that if you had a crystal ball and could see how bad it would get?
