"If You Heard What I Heard, You Would Never Forget" is a collection of interviews that tell the true stories of Holocaust survivors through the voices of their grandchildren. As we say goodbye to the last generation of survivors, it feels urgent to maintain awareness of their precious stories. I am honored to support this…
I've been fielding a lot of questions lately about the Hulu adaptation of We Were the Lucky Ones, like where we're filming (we'll shoot the bulk of the series in Romania), when we'll begin (at the end of November) and whether I'll go over for the shoot (absolutely, as often as possible!)--but the question I…
Both Sol, known for his generosity and easygoing nature, and Nechuma, the “mighty matriarch” as she’s affectionately called, are well liked and respected among Poles and Jews alike in the Radom community. They take great pride in the success of their fabric shop, as well as in their children’s upbringing, education, and careers.
Halina is the youngest and most rebellious of the five Kurc siblings. Whether in the right or blatantly in the wrong, she stands her ground with the brazen defiance of a pitbull guarding a bone. Thanks to her bravado, her blond hair, and her sea-green eyes, Halina, twenty-two at the start of the war, abides…
The youngest and most soft-spoken of the three Kurc brothers, Jakob is a hopeless romantic. Playful, humble, and forever resistant to being the center of attention, there’s hardly anywhere he’d rather be than beside his high school sweetheart, Bella, or peering down through the viewfinder of his Rolleiflex camera.
Genek is the oldest and the most debonair of the Kurc siblings. With a law degree, a dimpled smile, and a sexy, signature swagger, Genek, a lawyer by trade, can talk his way into or out of just about anything. His wife Herta jokes that he talked her into marriage the day they met at…
Addy’s older sister Mila is greatly admired by each of her siblings. With a degree in classical music and a passion for literature and travel, Mila’s approach to life is at once thoughtful and diligent. As a new mother at the start of the war, Mila must learn to keep a brave face, no matter…
Whether composing a hit song in Poland or bent over the keys of a Steinway aboard a ship full of refugees, Addy is an entertainer through and through. A charmer and a joker with a soft spot for beautiful women and American jazz, his musical prowess and quirky, larger-than-life personality earn him the affection of…
The other day, when it registered that Wyatt would be starting school in a couple of weeks, I realized just how much of this summer has been devoted to The Eternal Ones. In some ways, it's as if I've been living two parallel lives---one in the moment, and one in an alternate universe, seventy years in the past. July was…
I left you last month with a post about my editor---and I promise to update you on Jane's encouraging feedback at a later date. This post, however, I'd like to dedicate to my grandmother, Caroline, who passed away on Tuesday, two days short of her 100th birthday. Left: Young Caroline with her parents and brothers…
On Tuesday, I sent the latest version of The Lucky Ones to Jane Fransson, an editor who's worked with a host of successful authors, several of whom I've read and loved (e.g., Pamela Druckerman, Bringing up Bébé; Sadia Shepard, The Girl from Foreign). Admittedly, I held my email captive in a draft folder for a full day until I finally summoned the courage to set…
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…
I'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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
After 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…
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…
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…
"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…
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…
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."…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
(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…
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…