The most cynical may find it strange that “yet another story about the Holocaust” is happening, but it is never enough to scare us and remind us of what happened 85 years ago, which honestly, was yesterday. In the case of the series We Were The Lucky Ones, there is a direct connection with Brazil: it is the story of the Kurc family, who survived World War II and found themselves here again, putting down roots in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, thanks to the help of Brazilian Ambassador Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas, among others.

Starring Joey King and Logan Lerman, We Were The Lucky Ones arrived on Disney+ six months late compared to the United States, but in time for us to embark on a journey of love, pain, and hope. The series is an adaptation of the biographical book by Georgia Hunter, the writer who would never have imagined that her family’s emotions would become a bestseller or a series. With her Brazilian cousins ​​and a direct connection to our country, she agreed to talk to CLAUDIA and the exclusive chat (below) reflects much of the generosity and love that we see on the screen and in the pages of the book.

The story is about the Kurc Family, who lived in Poland and were forced to separate when the brutality of the war became a direct risk of death for them. Forced to work in deplorable conditions and evicted from their homes for being Jewish, they spent years trying to survive and, more than anything, to find themselves again. It is an incredible story, which was born from something unexpected, as Georgia reveals to us in the chat below.

CLAUDIA: We Are the Lucky Ones really touched me, especially because some of my best friends are kids whose great-grandparents came to Brazil to escape the war, including from Poland, like your family. And it’s emotional to look at such a sad story, even knowing from the title that it will have a happy ending. The journey is not easy. When was the moment you started your research?
GEORGIA: I have to go back a long way in time to tell you, like, the spark behind all of this, because the story is a true story, and it’s all based on my family. My grandfather is Addy Kurc, who is played by Logan Lerman in the series. You meet him in chapter one of the book. And I grew up very close to my grandfather. I’m from a small town in Massachusetts called Plainville, and he lived with my grandmother Caroline, a mile down the street. We were very, very close. But as a child, he never talked about growing up in Poland or being a Holocaust survivor. It just wasn’t part of our conversation. Although he was very charismatic, visionary, and positive, I don’t think it was a deep, dark secret that we didn’t talk about. And he passed away when I was 14.

When I was 15, an English teacher at my school gave us a project and said, to go out and interview a relative to learn a little bit about their roots and then report back. With the memory of my grandfather still so fresh, I decided to sit down with my grandmother Caroline, and ask her some questions about her upbringing, because I realized I knew very little about it. And that’s when her story came to light: I discovered that I’m a quarter Polish Jew, that I come from a large family of Holocaust survivors, and I learned a lot about my grandfather’s story, who, as the only brother living in France [when the war broke out], managed to get to Brazil and ended up meeting my grandmother in Rio.

However, my grandmother wasn’t able to share much about his other siblings (my grandfather was one of five children), and when I asked her about their survival of the Holocaust, and why they mostly stayed in Eastern Europe and Poland, she couldn’t answer because they didn’t talk much about that time.

CLAUDIA: But that was still in high school, how did it become part of your adult life and become a book?GEORGIA: So that was in 1995. If you fast forward five or six years to my college graduation in 2000, my mother organized a family reunion that year at our house in Massachusetts and invited all of her first cousins ​​on her father’s side. There are ten first cousins ​​of second-generation survivors. They all came from Brazil, France, Israel, and all over the states. We had an incredible week together, and one night at that gathering, I found myself around the dinner table with my mother and her cousins ​​and I realized that they were telling stories about the war, and they were unlike anything I had ever heard before. That was when my eyes were really opened to the narrative of the family of the greater courts, and I realized that this very close family was literally spread across the They traveled across continents at the beginning of the war to survive and had this kind of dual mission: to stay alive every day and also to get together to see each other again, because they often lost contact with each other.

I picked up little pieces of this story, like the cousin who lives in São Paulo, who was sent to his parents in the gulag in Siberia in the dead of winter. Like the cousins ​​whose mother climbed the Alps on foot to Italy, the escapes from the ghetto, the false identities, the disguised circumcision. The stories kept coming, and I think that was when I realized that someone really had to write all of this down, because they were just so overwhelming to me and I couldn’t imagine that this family had gone through what this family has gone through today. Somewhere inside me, the idea came to me that maybe I should take on this project of writing about this. But it would be eight years before I dared to start.

In 2008, I set out to unearth and record the family history. I knew it would be necessary to fly around the world because the family is so global, but it was really important for me to talk to as many people as possible in person. I traveled a lot and did a lot of interviews and outside research, and little by little the story began to form. Still, it took nine years for the book to be released in 2017.

CLAUDIA: Was there a particular story that stuck with you the most?
GEORGIA: It’s such a difficult question. I think what struck me was how different they were, and how different their paths to survival were. And of course, I was drawn to my grandfather’s story, and he was in some ways the easiest to relate to because I knew him best and also because he didn’t experience the Holocaust in the same way as the relatives who stayed in Poland. His was a very different kind of loss. He didn’t know if he would ever see his family again and his was a hope. But I became a mother halfway through writing the book, and suddenly I could relate to Mila’s story in a way that I couldn’t before. Mila was my grandfather’s older sister, and she had a baby, Felicia, who was a year old when the war started. Suddenly, the decisions that Mila was forced to make, wondering if her daughter would be safer in her own care or in someone else’s home and arms, having to decide whether or not to risk leaving her alone in her apartment, bringing her to work illegally. I mean, all those decisions every day, it was almost like I could relate, but it was almost impossible to relate at the same time if that makes sense.

CLAUDIA: Yes, it does.
GEORGIA: It’s impossible. And she was, you know, out of all the siblings, you know, compared to her sister Halina [Joey King’s character], softer and quieter and at the same time so strong and so brave. There’s a scene where she has to, she thought they were being saved, that they were on a list of people who were going to be allowed to move to Palestine, but they were going to be put on a train to a death camp… Hearing that description from Felicia, of how she and her mother survived that particular moment is probably the story that haunts me the most and inspires me the most. The courage that it took at that moment for Mila to make some very impossible, split-second decisions.

CLAUDIA: Yeah, it’s a scene in the show that’s very harrowing and I had to remind myself: that it ends well.
GEORGIA: Yeah, it ends well for her, but it’s like it doesn’t end well for most people, so I was constantly thinking about that as I was writing. I had to be very conscious of the fact that my family’s story has a quote-unquote happy ending and that they are a complete statistical anomaly when it comes to the number of people who have managed to survive and reunite. What was happening around them was a contrast, so I had to try to find ways to honor the history of the Holocaust while telling their own story. But like you, a lot of readers have told me that they had to, like, flip to the end of that scene and be sure.

CLAUDIA: And also, one of the things that you talk about so well is the issue of faith and positivity, and “Luck.” At the end of the project, did you come away from it with more faith or more trust in Luck?GEORGIA: That’s why the title, which I mention in the author’s note of the book, is about the night of that family gathering when we were all sitting around the table in 2000 and I heard the stories for the first time. Felicia, who was the oldest of the cousins ​​of her generation, looked around the table and said, “It’s a miracle that we’re all here today.

We were the lucky ones.” That really stuck with me and seemed like an appropriate title, in a way, to honor her.

But I asked this question in all my interviews: Was it just luck? What do you think it was? Of course, luck played a big part in their survival and all the decisions they were making could have ended differently. Every scenario could have ended differently, but the fact is that they were planning ahead, they were constantly making choices and trying to stay one step ahead. They were brave and resourceful.

I think throughout the whole process, it certainly brought me closer to my roots. Like, just sitting down, coming to Rio, and spending a week with my cousins, my mom’s cousins ​​in Rio, I would never have done that if it weren’t for this project. Just sitting in their house, asking questions, getting to know them, and then through them, getting to know their parents, who I’ve never met. I never got to meet a lot of my relatives in the book and the series, but I feel closer to my roots, and more grounded in a way than I did before I started this project. And I certainly feel more faith in humanity, although it’s a Holocaust story, which would probably make some people lose faith in humanity. That’s because among the things that kept my family going, besides luck, resourcefulness, courage, and perseverance, was love. The love that carried them carried them through the day, and the love for each other, the hope that they would meet again. And that love spread throughout the family, and we all felt it.

Today we are a very eclectic and diverse family, but we all get together whenever we can to see each other. The whole family came to the screening of the series here in Washington, DC. 30-something family members all together, and that is very unique.

And I was also very moved by the people who helped my family along the way. The Brazilian ambassador Souza Dantas, never spoke about his bravery and help as he was issuing visas to Jews who were illegally trapped in Europe and helping them get out. My grandfather was one of them, and Souza Dantas probably saved his life. The nun who took in little Felicia, the peasant couple who took in my great-grandparents and hid them in their home. All these people who raised their hands where they might have been complacent or might have said no or even turned them in for a reward. They took such a huge risk and I draw inspiration and faith from these acts of selflessness and kindness.

CLAUDIA: You know, most Brazilians don’t know the story of Ambassador Luis Martins de Souza Dantas or Aracy de Carvalho, the Angel of Hamburg (although her life was turned into a series in Brazil). And it’s very interesting to see him in this story, to see Brazil having such a strong impact on his family’s trajectory. Even more so, why they decided to stay here. Even though some of them later left, the characters in the series stayed in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Do you know why they embraced Brazil?
GEORGIA: They had no interest in going back to Poland and there was a lot of anti-Semitism after the war everywhere, people were still in danger so they were ready to find stability in a place where they could raise their families, start over, and feel safe. I don’t know if my cousins, José and Michelle, in Rio and São Paulo, asked their parents. I imagine that they landed in this beautiful country, where the people are friendly, where there is a sense of being at ease and they felt welcomed in a way that they had not felt for a long time.

Another important factor is that they all lived together, under the same roof, with children and grandchildren, and that is a really beautiful thing, after having spent so much time apart, on the run and insecure, to be under the same roof and feel safe and be part of the lives of their children and grandchildren. Today the fourth generation after them is running around Rio and São Paulo now. That is beautiful.

CLAUDIA: But Addy ended up going to the United States and we see in the series him making the choice.
GEORGIA: Yes, and when my grandfather came to the United States, he ended up in a place where there were no Poles or Jews, so he did not raise his family in the Jewish faith. He Americanized his name and assimilated completely into American culture. I understand why. His brothers, on the other hand, who came to states where there was a large Jewish population, maintained their faith and kept the spelling of their last name.

CLAUDIA: What was it like to see a star like Joey King play Halina? And of course, Logan Lerman as her grandfather, Addy?
GEORGIA: I can’t say enough about our cast and how perfectly they portrayed each of their characters. It’s weird to call them characters because they’re related. [laughs] I think it took us longer than most shows to find the right people, but we got it right. Joey is just extraordinary. Every time I saw her on set it felt like a masterclass in acting. She would be chatting and when she stepped on set, everything changed. And the way she was able to get into Halina’s heart, her shoes and her mind, and carry that big personality into that little body… [gets emotional]

Halina was the most She was five years old and was just figuring out her life when everything was turned upside down. In the end, she ends up being kind of the orchestrator of the family’s safety because she can more easily pass herself off as non-Jewish and use her fake identity to get her husband out of prison. It was a big ask for Joey to carry that arc for her character and she nailed it. She did a phenomenal job.

There are a lot of things that Halina and Joey King have in common and vice versa. They’re very similar.

You know, a lot of family members came to set, and one of them is Halina’s second daughter, Anna, and she and Joey were always hugging and laughing and having a great time with each other. I also got emotional when I saw Logan meet my mom for the first time. When I saw Nicole [Brydon Bloom], who plays my grandmother, meet my mom for the first time and be on set for their wedding day, it was extraordinary. Watching real people bring their stories to life in the most beautiful way, it was really moving.

CLAUDIA: In today’s world, is it even more important to tell a story with hope?
GEORGIA: We certainly didn’t make the show to make any political statements, especially since I wrote the book in 2008, so if you had asked me if I could have predicted that we would be living in this world today with the headlines the way they are, I would never, ever know or probably believe you. But it’s important. Television, a book, or documentaries are ways to relive history, and the more we can do that, in any medium, the easier it becomes to relate to the people who lived through it at the time. Because when you read it in a textbook or just read a headline, it becomes impossible to understand what it was like.

When you put it in a family of five siblings and see it through their eyes. If our characters didn’t see or experience some kind of violence, we wouldn’t show it on camera. We only show what our family experienced.

This story not only brings understanding to what can happen when we stop seeing ourselves as human beings, but it also brings hope and a sense of humanity, this faith in humanity that we talk about, which I think is what the world needs most right now. Both the book and the series have given me a greater understanding and a deeper sense of empathy, and I think if we could all take a little bit of that away, I would be happy.

CLAUDIA: On your website, you are very, very generous with tips on how people encourage people to do research on their ancestors. What tips would you give to anyone who wants to venture down the same path?
GEORGIA: I direct people to my website, http://www.georgiaHunterauthor.com where there are research tips and links to different databases. Because as much as I was learning from my relatives, I only had the luxury of talking to one person, Felicia, who was still alive and had first-hand memories. Everyone else was just sharing family stories that had been passed down, so it’s worth doing the outside research. But start asking questions, you never know which aunt or uncle might have heard a story from their great-grandparents, you know, or a grandparent or a great-aunt or a great-uncle. Create a timeline and write an essay, or a blog, so that the information is there for future generations. Don’t worry so much about the content, or the format it will take, tell it in a way that feels true to you, your family, and your heart, and the rest will fall into place. It’s a scary process, but it’s also a rewarding one. It’s worth the effort.

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