We Were the Lucky Ones

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?

Neighbors

Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland by Jan T. Gross
2002
Weight: Amazon says 7.2 ounces, but it is far more heavy than that for so many reasons.
Method of Disposal: I am really not sure. Any suggestions? It might be donated.



I have been dreading writing this for days. Every time I think about it I fall asleep instead. It seems almost impossible to “review” a book like this because the history is so deplorable how would you ever be able to focus on the quality of the writing, or even the research? I was slightly critical when I first started reading it, but that faded away as my horror grew.

This book details the mass murder of 1,600 Jewish people by their own neighbors—in one day. These people were not ordered to do so, instead they acted on their own. Sure, there were leaders, cheerleaders, and those who were particularly brutal. The country had been groped and grappled by the USSR and Germany. But what does any of that mean? We, as people, are terrifying creatures.

There was one family who hid some of their neighbors. There were only a handful of survivors, and they still had to deal with life after the Germans established control. Mass murder was no longer allowed, but the camps were the alternative.
Sometimes, it is hard to understand the reason for reading so much gruesome detail. Is it just so that we always remember? Will it really make us act different? Do we enjoy the horror we feel? What is wrong with us? In this case, one thing this book succeeded in doing was confronting what the writer stated was a hidden history that the people of Poland were ashamed of. It went against the proposal that the Germans had been the villains, not any Poles.
The author writes the following:

…the history of a society can be conceived as a collective biography. And just as in a biography—which is also composed of discrete episodes—everything in the history of a society is in rapport with everything else. And if at some point in this collective biography a big lie is situated, then everything that comes afterward will be devoid of authenticity and laced with fear of discovery. And instead of living their own lives, members of such a community will be suspiciously glancing over their shoulders, trying to guess what others think about what they are doing(113).

I guess images, words, our environment changes us. I suppose we continue to remember the worst conceivable things, by reading about them or watching them, so that we can imprint them into our brain. This is wrong, this is right, this is what a hero looks like. We are all children trying to train ourselves how to be humane. Perhaps, if we study it hard enough, attempt to feel pain deep enough, we can put to rest the community and self-doubts the Stanford Prison Experiment raised. The truths that books like this expose, “regular” people can and will turn on their neighbors if they need a scapegoat bad enough. Look around the world now, look at the other mass-exterminations of people, look at all the violence. Where are we going? What are we doing? Where is justice and what does it look like? It is easy to feel like a child, to curl up in a fetal position, and fall asleep rather than deal with it all. Complacency.

All of that being said, I still feel like I am doing the memory and the people an injustice.

And that being said, if you go on Amazon 23 people gave the book 1 star and 29 people gave it 5 stars. The accuracy of the research comes under fire quite often, as research often does in these situations. I cannot claim to be an expert on Poland during World War II. I do know that far too many people died and were tortured, and that there is no good reason. Some people dispute 1,600 vs 200-300 people. 200-300 people. 200-300 people.