We Were the Lucky Ones

Mila is the elder daughter of the Kurc family. She is college-educated in music and an accomplished pianist. At the beginning of the story, she is an overwhelmed and insecure new mother to baby Felicia. She depends heavily on her maid and her mother to help with the baby, and she defers to her husband Selim in other matters. When Selim disappears after joining the Polish Home Army, Mila must deal with the deteriorating conditions brought about by the war and the Nazi occupation. She rises to the occasion and becomes both a strong, capable mother and daughter.

Through her quick thinking and good instincts, Mila manages to keep her daughter safe, even when it means they must separate. She continually sacrifices her own comfort and security for the safety of her daughter. When it is revealed that her husband has survived, Mila worries that the war has changed him, just as the war has physically and emotionally taken a toll on Mila and Felicia. Nothing brings Mila more happiness than discovering in the end how much Selim and Felicia love each other.

Genek is the eldest son of the Kurc family. Genek is a lawyer and a talented speaker and writer. At the beginning of the story, he is fun-loving and popular with his friends. He is angry that he has been demoted at his law firm because he is Jewish. When Genek maintains his Polish identity and refuses Soviet citizenship on a form, the decision later devastates him when he and his wife are sent to a Siberian labor camp as a result. Genek feels helpless, unable to protect his wife and newborn baby Józef from the harrowing conditions in the camp.

Genek jumps at the chance to improve their situation by volunteering to fight in the Polish Home Army, though the journey to the place where he can join is full of continued deprivation. Genek learns that he must deny his heritage and pretend to be a Christian to sign up for the Army, but he does not hesitate to do what he must to provide better conditions for his family. He fights bravely at the Monte Cassino battle in Italy. Reuniting with the rest of his family after many years brings Genek indescribable joy.

Halina is the youngest child of the Kurc family. She is fiercely independent and somewhat rebellious. At the beginning of the story, Halina is working as an assistant in her brother-in-law’s medical laboratory. She has been in love with her family’s boarder Adam since she was a teenager. When the occupying German Army assigns her to work on a beet farm, Halina thinks it must be a joke. Having never done manual labor before, she must quickly adjust to new hardships.

Throughout the war, Halina is the protector of her family, especially her parents. She is the one who acquires false documents for them so that they can avoid the concentration camps. Halina arranges for her parents to live with a Polish family in the country to keep them safe, and she finds work with an employer who repeatedly helps her and her family. Halina spends months incarcerated in an infamous prison in Kraków, where she is starved and beaten. Despite her trials, she remains resolute and determined to reunite her family. Halina is the one who leads her family out of Poland and to Italy after the war, hiking over the Alps while pregnant. She and Adam have a baby boy named Ricardo.

Jakob is the youngest son of the Kurc family. He is soft-spoken and gentle, often preferring to take pictures of people with his camera over talking to them. At the beginning of the story, Jakob is in law school. He plans to marry Bella and move to France near Addy when he finishes. The war disrupts his plans, so Jakob must become bolder and more resourceful to keep himself and Bella safe. Jakob wishes he had asked Bella to marry him before the deprivation of the war, but he does so once he realizes that the future is not guaranteed. Together they survive incredible danger.

Jakob faces a great personal challenge when Bella falls into a deep depression after losing her family. He must fight to keep her going, offering encouragement and love. Jakob feels himself come back to life when Bella recovers from her depression, and they are ready to make a new life together. They have a son named Victor and emigrate to the United States. Jakob is sad to leave the rest of his family but wants Bella to be near her last remaining family in America.

Bella is Jakob’s girlfriend and later his wife. Bella is close to her sister and parents and loves Jakob deeply. At the beginning of the story, Bella is despondent when Jakob goes away to fight in the war. When he returns and asks her to join him in Lvov, she risks making a dangerous journey to be with him. Bella is devastated when her parents and sister are lost and presumed dead, and she loses the will to live. Through her own force of will, she pulls herself out of her depression and learns to be grateful for her life with Jakob. When she has a son and they embark on a new life in the US, Bella appreciates the optimism of the post-war world.

Nechuma is the matriarch of the Kurc family. She is proud of her grown children and the successful fabric business she and Sol have built. She is a strong, kind woman who is completely devoted to her family. At the beginning of the story, Nechuma is a bit worried about the advancing news of war, but she figures that her people have survived war and pogroms before. She cannot imagine her children suffering the way that she and Sol did during the Great War, living in a basement and scavenging for food. When her worst fears are realized, Nechuma continues to hope for her family’s safety and tries to maintain her core of strength. At the end of the novel, Nechuma marvels that all her children and their families survived.

Sol is the patriarch of the Kurc family. He is jovial, devout, and optimistic. Like Nechuma, he worked hard to provide the best life possible for his children. He adores his granddaughter Felicia and loves to make her laugh. As conditions deteriorate during the war, he pushes himself past his levels of endurance for his family. After the war is over and his family is safe, Sol is gratified and thankful for their many blessings.

Felicia is Mila and Selim’s daughter and is only 5 months old at the beginning of the story. She grows up during the war, her life full of fear, confusion, and hunger. She loves her mother and grandparents and hates her separation from them. Felicia does not remember her father, who disappeared when she was a young baby, so she constructs fantasies about how strong and good he is, and that he will come to save them someday. Felicia almost perishes from scurvy in the basement of the convent where her mother sent her for safety, but she survives. When she finally reunites with her father, she loves him instantly. The trauma of the war leaves her somewhat hesitant and reserved, but she goes on to have a happy life and becomes a doctor like her father. As an adult, she relates to Hunter that the Kurcs “were the lucky ones” (395), which the author uses to title her work.

Herta is Genek’s wife. When the Soviet police come to take Genek away in Lvov, Herta insists on staying with her husband, so she goes to the labor camp in Siberia as well. There she is forced to give birth during a brutal winter, when it is so cold that her baby’s eyes freeze shut overnight, which she warms with breastmilk. She remains strong despite all the hardships her family faces. At the end of the war, Herta is desolate when she learns that her parents and siblings were killed, but she recovers when she becomes pregnant with her second child, who is born in Rio.

Adam is the Kurcs’ tenant, and he falls in love with Halina before the war. At the beginning of the story, he is a medical student. After he returns from the brief stand Poland made against the Germans, Adam settles in Lvov and becomes a member of the Underground resistance. With the resistance, he becomes a prominent figure, as he provides refugees with forged documentation, allowing them to escape occupied Europe. He marries Halina and, as the most talented counterfeiter in the area, helps her family acquire false identification papers. Adam’s family perishes in the concentration camps, but it takes him a long time to discover their fate. After the war, he settles with Halina and his new son in São Paolo.

Eliska is a wealthy young Jewish woman from Czechoslovakia traveling with her mother to Rio on the same ship as Addy. They fall in love and plan to marry, but there is tension between them because Eliska cannot understand Addy’s torment about his missing family. Eliska only wants to talk about happy matters, and seeing Addy unhappy is upsetting to her. Addy’s two love interests, Eliska and later Caroline, function as foils. Whereas Eliska pressures Addy to suppress his sadness and the desire to find his family, Caroline encourages and supports Addy’s endeavors to reunite with the long lost Kurcs. Ultimately, Addy breaks his engagement with Eliska because she does not share his values of family.