Can it be--August already? What a summer it's been. Mine (in a nutshell) has entailed exploring Nova Scotia's seaboard with family, cavorting with friends in Charleston, beach-hopping with Wyatt in Rowayton, tackling boatloads of travel writing assignments, and, of course, pushing to complete a second round of edits to my manuscript. Dvora said her mother…
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Well folks, I'm mid-way through a second round of book edits, and if I squint hard enough, I think I can see the finish line! A pre-war ad for my grandparents' fabric store in Radom. Translated: "Silk goods, woolens and cotton, ladies' and men's, and a great range of curtains and caps,…
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Last spring, I contacted the Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in DC, in hopes of tracking down some family records through the International Tracing Service (ITS), a German archive containing ~3o million WWII/Nazi-era documents. I submitted five separate inquiries, one for each of the Kurc siblings. I never heard back, and after a month, I marked ITS on my list…
Read MoreI'm excited to report that an excerpt from The Lucky Ones has been published! Last month, the non-profit writing center 826 Seattle released its 2014 anthology, What to Read in the Rain, featuring works by "famous and not-yet-famous" adult and young writers. My submission, entitled No Looking Back (a chapter found midway through my manuscript), is set in 1942 in Nazi-occupied Poland; it describes my…
Read MoreI've been out of touch, and I apologize---this has been a difficult post to craft. Writing it sends me back to the day at the end of October when, half way through our pregnancy, Robert and I lost our baby girl. We spent the first half of November cocooned in our home. We held each…
Read MoreGreetings, friends! I'm sure many of you are as reluctant as I am to bid summertime adieu---although I must admit, I'm looking forward to some downtime this fall. Robert, Wyatt and I have been moving nonstop, it seems, hopping between family reunions, horse shows, adventure races and ultrasound appointments. Turns out the reason I've been so…
Read MoreWhen it rains it pours. That's certainly been the case here in Connecticut, where the past few months have brought weeks of torrential downpour (and I thought we'd left the rain behind in Seattle!), along with---on a much brighter note---several unexpected opportunities to promote The Lucky Ones. Shortly after I completed my piece for the Gordon…
Read MoreA couple of months ago, I received a request for alumni updates from Siobhan Welsh at the Gordon School in Rhode Island, where I attended 1st through 8th grade. When Siobhan heard about my book project, she immediately asked if I would consider coming in to speak with Gordon's 8th grade class about my family's story.…
Read MoreAs a new mom, I'm always on the lookout for tips on parenting. A year and a half ago, when I was still sporting a baby bump, my shelves were piled with the usual prerequisites---Baby 411, The Happiest Baby on the Block, What to Expect: the First Year. Wyatt, one month old, stares…
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I'll never forget the day I got the call. I was at my uncle's house in Warwick, Rhode Island for dinner. My cell phone rang as we were sitting down to eat. Who did I know with a 919 area code? And then it dawned on me. Eliska's voice was deep, with a thick accent,…
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Greetings and happy 2013! I hope you're as excited as I am for what the new year has to bring. #1 on my list of resolutions this year is to complete a draft of The Lucky Ones by summertime. Wish me luck! I left you last with a snapshot of life for the Kurc siblings in December of…
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Last April, I received a letter from the Memorial Center in Moscow---an organization I contacted in hopes of tracking down additional information about my great-uncle Genek, who was deported from Poland in 1941, along with his wife Herta, to one of Stalin's Siberian gulags. The letter I received from the Memorial Center in…
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The Sunday before last, the New York Times published an article entitled Proudly Bearing Elders’ Scars, Their Skin Says ‘Never Forget.’ In it, journalist Jodi Rudoren describes a movement among twenty- and thirty-somethings to replicate the tattoos worn on the the forearms of their Holocaust-survivor relatives. I found the piece both chilling and inspiring. …
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Neck deep in research on Stalin's Siberian gulags, I was consumed with the burning question of how and why Genek and Herta were sent off to Siberia in the first place. By recommendation of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation, I contacted Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Amazingly, I heard back right away---not only did Hoover have a record of Genek's name, they had…
Read MoreAfter six weeks of squatting with friends and another six weeks of tackling travel writing assignments and endless piles of boxes, we're (nearly!) settled in our new home...which means, at long last, I can return to my book. Inspired by a recent visit from my cousin-once-removed, Michel (visiting New York from Brazil), I thought I'd…
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I've been thinking a lot recently about the meaning of "home." A month ago, after a seven-year stint in Seattle, Robert and I packed up six-month-old Wyatt and all of our belongings and caught a one-way flight to Connecticut. The day before our move, however, our CT lease fell through, and our world turned upside…
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You guessed right, Daryl---the mosaic in the banner photo above lives just off the shore of Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Congratulations on being the first to respond correctly---your iTunes gift card is on the way (you should consider downloading Getz & Gilberto's Girl from Ipanema to commemorate your win!). Robert and I visited…
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Thanks to all of you who have guessed/commented on last week's "name that photo" contest. The verdict's still out on where the banner shot (above) was taken...which means a $25 iTunes gift certificate is still up for grabs! I've decided to post one, last clue---a panned-out photo (below)---which I imagine will incite a few aha's!…
Read MoreHi all, I've decided to host a contest. What's more fun, after all, than a chance to WIN something?? Before I explain the rules, however, I have to apologize to my family on my mother's side (which includes anyone with the last or maiden name Kurc, Courts, Hunter, Abernathy, Prasquier, and Eichenwald)---you're not allowed to…
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"I wasn't the only one in the family with multiple identities," Ricardo said when he'd finished explaining the story behind his two birth certificates. "During the war, my parents went by the name BRZOZA." Ricardo's father, it turns out, was part of the Jewish Underground. He made false papers. "How?" I asked. "He replicated the stamps…
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Last night I watched a documentary called 50 Children, the Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus (available on HBO until 5/5), about a Philadelphia couple, Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, who set off in 1939 on a mission to bring 50 Jewish children out of Nazi-occupied Austria. The Krauses faced several daunting obstacles along the way---they themselves…
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A month after I returned from Paris, I flew to Miami to interview Ricardo, Anna's older brother (my grandfather's nephew). Ricardo was born just after the war, although when, and where exactly, seemed to be something of a mystery. "Ask him about his birthdays," my mother suggested, before I left. "Birthday...S?" "Yeah. He has two of them."…
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Hello, friends and family! Little Man Wyatt has rounded the three month bend and I'm happy to report that I'm back (well, almost) from the Land of the Sleep Deprived, and excited to get the ball rolling again on blog posts. I left you last in Paris, where I'd spent an afternoon interviewing Felicia (daughter of…
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Dear family, friends, and followers of The Lucky Ones, Exciting news on the home front--Robert and I have welcomed a new branch to our family tree! Thomas Wyatt Farinholt ("Wyatt") arrived on November 23rd, just over three weeks early (in true Kurc fashion, he's already on his own schedule--determined to take fate into his own…
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In February of '08 I flew to Paris to interview two relatives: Felicia and Anna (daughters of Mila and Halina, my grandfather’s two sisters). Equipped with a digital voice recorder and an empty moleskin notebook (and a flutter in my stomach that kept me wide awake for the duration of my ten-hour overnight journey), February 11, 2008 will…
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It was January 17th, 2008 when I finally picked my mother’s black binder up off the shelf. A new year, full of resolutions, including one big one—to unearth and record my family history. I sat cross-legged on my couch in Seattle, the binder resting on my lap, took a long, slow breath, and flipped it…
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I remember the day I told my mother I wanted to write a book about our family history. We were sitting on her gray and white-striped couch in Providence, Rhode Island, the day after Christmas, 2005. “I’ve decided I’d like to write a book about how Papa and his siblings survived the Holocaust," I said.…
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(Continued from Thirty-Two Relatives Under One Roof: a Raucous-Turned-Revelational Family Reunion) It turns out my grandfather (who later changed his name, for obvious reasons, from Adolph/Addy to Eddy), was just one of over twenty Kurcs originally from Radom, Poland. He was living in Toulouse in ‘39 at the start of the war. When he learned it would…
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In July of 2000, the summer after I graduated from the University of Virginia, my mother organized a Kurc family reunion at our house on Martha’s Vineyard. She invited thirty-two relatives (many of whom she hadn’t seen in over twenty years), and to her surprise, all thirty-two RSVPed, “Of course we’ll be there!” We rented…
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