World War II · Series · 2024
We Were the Lucky Ones
A Jewish family from Radom is scattered by the war across ghettos, Soviet labour camps, battlefields and other continents, each of them determined to survive and find the others.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 6 places.
Stop 1: Radom
Key location
The Kurcs gather for Passover in their comfortable Radom home, the last time the whole family will be together.
Stop 2: Lwów
Genek, Jakob and Halina try to rebuild their lives in Soviet-held Lwów, until the NKVD comes for Genek and his wife.
Stop 3: Labour camp at Altynai, Urals
Genek and Herta cut timber in a remote camp, where their son is born in brutal conditions.
Stop 4: Rio de Janeiro
After a long journey from France through Africa, Addy finally lands in Brazil, desperate for news from Poland.
Stop 5: Warsaw
Halina, Mila and Jakob live on the 'Aryan' side under false names, one document check away from death.
Stop 6: Monte Cassino
Now a soldier in the Polish II Corps, Genek goes into the final assault on the mountain in Italy.
What really happened
The eight-part series adapts Georgia Hunter's 2017 novel about her grandfather's family, the Kurcs of Radom. Poland's partition in 1939 split them between German-occupied Radom, where about 30,000 Jews were confined in a ghetto and deported to Treblinka in August 1942, and Soviet-occupied Lwów, from where the NKVD deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens to the interior of the USSR.
Genek was sent to a labour camp at Altynai in the Urals and later joined the Polish army of General Anders, which left the USSR through Persia and fought at Monte Cassino in May 1944. His brother Addy, stranded in France in 1939, reached Brazil. Others survived in Warsaw on forged papers. The dramatisation compresses and invents scenes but follows the family's documented routes.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- We Were the Lucky Ones
- Created by
- Erica Lipez
- Countries
- United States
- Languages
- English
- Seasons
- 1 season
- Released
- 2024
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Eastern Front, Mediterranean & Africa, The Americas
- Themes
- Holocaust
- True story
