B2. Surviving the Holocaust: We Were the Lucky Ones

Georgia Hunter’s extraordinary novel, We Were the Lucky Ones, was written some years after the author learned at the age of 15 that her grandfather who had died the previous year was a Polish Holocaust survivor, one of five siblings, all of whom survived WW II. She understood the importance of learning about and then writing this amazing family saga for her family and the world. Each of the siblings and their parents were among the few Jewish survivors of Radom, Poland. The novel is structured by historical events which provide the background against which the stories of each family member is told. 

INSTRUCTOR: Marcia Tannenbaum is a local attorney, mediator and educator who has been teaching courses on the Holocaust in various Jewish and secular venues for more than 40 years, including WISE. While teaching at Nichols College in Dudley, MA, Marcia created and taught a course on the Literature of the Holocaust. In 2001, she presented a paper at the International Conference on Teaching the Holocaust at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. On that trip, Marcia visited Auschwitz with other conference participants and then spent the Jewish Festival of Shevuoth in Warsaw before returning to Worcester. 

REQUIRED BOOK:  We Were the Lucky Ones, Georgia Hunter, Penguin Publishing Group, 9780399563096, 2018.

OPTIONAL BOOK: The War Against the Jews, Lucy S. Davidowicz. Random House, 9780553345322, 1986.

READINGS FOR FIRST CLASS: Hidden in a Stash of Old Letters, a Grandfather I Never Knew found at Jewish Book Council link  jewishbookcouncil.org