We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter

We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter

The shadow of war lurks over the Kurc family in the spring of 1939, though they do their best to maintain normalcy. This is why the family talks of new romances and new babies as they gather for Seder, not how life is becoming increasingly dangerous for Jews in Radom, Poland. However, soon war arrives on their doorstep, flinging the Kurcs around the globe as they try to escape its horrors. Separated, exiled and struggling to escape what must be certain death, the Kurcs must find the hope and inner strength to endure.

403 pages. 

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

 Pages: 296

"Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek’s harrowing story of survival is woven into the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century’s grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us."

I am starting banned books week early this year with this difficult yet amazing graphic novel. The author does not hold back in describing the holocaust through his fathers experiences, and the experience of getting the story out of him. This is a book that I wish more people would read. It is so haunting and powerful in telling the duel stories, that of the holocaust survivor and their children trying to make sense of the past. 

From Dust, a Flame by Rebecca Podos

Ok but like...seeing the characters in the 90s and in the 40s, so being able to see three generations... I'm not crying.
I. Love. Jewish. Folklore. Like. 
Hey look, this is Encanto level trauma...except it's not. because everyone's trauma is different and we don't compare trauma, but like...same symptoms....
Is it just me, or is it that the daughter of the character who hated Disney princesses is named Ariel....like...Did I hear wrong?
All of the yearning and angst. 
416 Pages

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

I remember a lot of my classmates were assigned this book at some point in elementary school. Our class never read it, but I'm glad I picked it up now! This is a great fictional introduction to World War II for younger readers. While it avoids any sort of graphic images, it does still portray the fear and violence civilians faced during the conflict. I also learned a bit of history I didn't know about-the mass resistance of Danes by sneaking most Jews out of their country to Sweden. This book is really good, for any age!

137 pages

Read Harder Challenge Task #20

The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero Who Infiltrated Auschwitz by Jack Fairweather

The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero Who Infiltrated Auschwitz by Jack Fairweather

In Nazi-occupied Poland, Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to infiltrate a mysterious new camp called Auschwitz along the Reich's border. His goal was to report Nazi crimes and raise an army to revolt. For the next two and a half years, Witold smuggled evidence of the Nazis' atrocities to the Allies, eventually shaping their response to the Holocaust. Yet after his show trial and execution in 1948, Witold's name was forgotten for decades--until the 1990s, after Poland's return to democracy.  

528 pages.

Rabbit Girls by Anna Ellory

After the Berlin wall falls in 1989, Miriam, who has been living in East Berlin, goes back  to West Berlin to care for her dying father. She is fleeing an abusive husband, and is escaping both him and an abusive regime.

In caring for her father, she finds an Auschwitz tattoo on his wrist. She never knew he was in a concentration camp, so starts looking for answers to questions she never knew she had. Her mother is dead, but in her belongings she finds a uniform from a prison camp. Sewn into the linings she finds letters from a mysterious woman named Frieda.

She desperately needs answers, but her father is semi-comatose, and unable to tell her what she needs to know. Will she be able to unravel the secrets of her parent's past?



390 pages

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

Trudy Schlemmer is a professor of German history in Minnesota. She is taking oral histories of World War II survivors. Her mother, Anna, is German, also, but has never talked about her past. Trudy knows she was three when her mother married an American soldier after the war.

The story moves back and forth from the present, starting with the funeral of Anna's husband, to Anna's story in Germany during the war. It is a story of family secrets; of the horrors of the holocaust, and a sobering portrait of life in a country at war.

Trudy has always had a million questions about her mother's past; about who her father was; about the war, and her mother's part in it. But her mother refuses to answer any questions. This is a heartbreaking story of shame and guilt that forever impacts the relationship between a mother and daughter.


496 pages

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

In  France in 1939, Vianne Mauriac is living in the quiet village of Carriveau with her husband and young daughter when he is sent to the Front.  It is unthinkable that Germany will invade France, but they do.  The French government immediately capitulates, allowing Germany to establish two countries; Free France, and occupied France. Carriveau is in the occupied section, and a German officer billets in her home. She is forced  to accept if she expects to survive.

As the war progresses, the German take everything from the French; they take the good food, leaving the citizenry to slowly starve. They take their dignity, their hope, and in many cases, their lives. They take any valuables they might own, and people are forced to burn their furniture to survive the cold winters. In the end, of course, France is on the winning side of the war, but life will never be the same for those who live through it.


440 pages

The Hare with the Amber Eyes: a hidden inheritance by Edmund De Waal

I was given this book for my birthday-something I probably would not have discovered on my own. I was immediately drawn into the story of one family and their collection of Japanese netsuke.  De Waal starts his family biography in Japan with the death of his great uncle Ignaz and his inheritance of the collection.  Then he takes us back to the beginnings of the collection in Paris during the 1870s when the craze for all things Japanese was just beginning.  De Waal traces back his family's start as wheat traders in Odessa, the accumulation of wealth, the establishment of the family banking business in Paris, and the expansion into Vienna.  The family's wealth did not insulate them from anti-Semitism. Their collection of netsuke and other fine arts was often their entree into high society. Sadly, the rise of Hitler marked the downfall of the family.  Many family members were murdered in the Holocaust and their wealth appropriated by the Nazis.  The netsuke collection was miraculously restored to the family thanks to a loving family servant. Today the netsuke are an actual, physical link to past family members. The miniatures were handled by them and each one evokes a family memory. In the end, the Hare with the Amber Eyes is a different kind of Holocaust memoir- one told by the silent witness of a family's lost possessions. 354 pages.

I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits

In 1939, a five-year-old named Josef hides under a table and watches as his family is murdered in Transylvania by the Romanian Iron Guard. The family's maid takes him back to the farm where she grew up and pretends he is her son. Five years later, Josef rescues a five-year-old girl named Mila whose parents are murdered while running toward a rabbi they think will save them.

Josef helps Mila find Zalman Stern, a Satmar Jew. Satmars are a very conservative Jewish sect. After the war, Zalman arranges for Josef to be sent to Williamsburg, Brooklyn to become a Satmar scholar. When Mila is 18, Zalman arranges for her to marry Josef and go to America with him.

Josef and Mila have a very loving relationship, within the confines of their faith, which dictates everything they do, sexually and otherwise, in their marriage. Mila has been taught that her purpose in life is to be a dutiful wife, and be fruitful and multiply. But the years go by, and she doesn't conceive. She is tested, but for Josef to be tested he will have to commit a sin. Mila finally takes matters into her own hands, and the result leads to ultimate tragedy.


336 pages

The Lemon Tree : An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan

Sandy Tolan, a journalist who covered the Middle East for many years, wanted to put a human face on the conflict. He found it in the story of one small stone house in Ramla, Israel that had a lemon tree in the garden. After the war of 1967, Bashir, a young Palestinian man, knocks on the door of the house, which his father had built, and where his family lived until they were expelled by the Israelis in 1948. His father planted the lemon tree shortly before.  Dahlia, a young Israeli woman, answers the door. Her family was given  the house when they immigrated to Israel from Bulgaria in 1948.

Bashir and Dahlia become friends, and maintain that friendship until the present, despite their profound disagreement over how to solve the Middle East conflict. Dahlia becomes an activist, advocating for a peaceful solution. Bashir spends most of his life in prison, several times being accused of being a terrorist.

Tolan gives a mesmerizing history of the region and the geo-political roots of the conflict. He believes that peace can only come through the efforts of individual people coming together to understand and empathize with one another.

It is a compelling story. It is non-fiction, yet reads like a novel. I learned a lot from this book.


384 pages