A Jewish show with a less-Jewish epilogue

We finished We Were the Lucky Ones on Hulu, based on a book by Georgia Hunter. It tells the (based-on-a-true) story of the Kurc family (parents and five grown children, plus spouses and small children), Jews from Radom, Poland, who survived the Holocaust. None was in a death or work camp. Among them, they endured multiple Jewish experiences of the time--deported to a Siberian work camp during the period of Soviet control; served in the Polish underground; hid with a non-Jewish family or in a Catholic orphanage; passed as non-Jews and worked in Nazi-occupied Poland; spent time in a Nazi prison; fought for the Polish Army in Italy; lived in the ghettos while working in German-controlled factories or other jobs. And one escaped Europe aboard the SS Alsina, a story I never knew--one of the last ships to leave Marseilles bound for Brazil, the Alina was rerouted to Dakar and then Casablanca, where the passengers were placed in a concentration camp; a small number of passengers were released and placed on different ships for South America, by which point their Brazilian visas had expired. The show depicts the information vacuum; as everyone tried to survive in their own small piece of a broader nightmare, they knew nothing of what happened to any of their family members.

This is a very Jewish show, even by standards of a Holocaust story. All but 1 1/2 major characters are Jewish. Those Jewish characters attempt to control their destinies; no "Gentile Savior" narratives here (a common complaint about many Holocaust stories). A Jewish actor plays every major Jewish character. The Jewish characters speak and pray in Hebrew. Jewish holy days, especially Passover, form a recurring motif in the story, each revealing the state of the family at that moment. It shows that Jews were unique targets--not only of the Germans, but also of Poles, French, Soviets, Ukrainians, and Brazilians--of hatred and discrimination that ranged from the violent to the banal (and mostly not overly cartoonish). It shows a bit of the Judenrat's role in governing and policing the ghetto.

But I cannot stop thinking of the aftermath. Hunter's grandfather was one of the grown children--he was aboard the Alsina, then managed to escape to Brazil; he anglicized his name, married a non-Jewish American woman, and moved to Massachusetts after the war. As Hunter tells the story, she did not know her grandfather was Jewish (and thus that she was part-Jewish) until he died when she was 15. He used to travel to see family in Brazil specifically for Passover, but never told the family why he was going. She obviously knew nothing of his or his family's experiences during the War. Hunter attended a family reunion a few years after her grandfather's death, which prompted her to research the family and tell the story (in fictionalized form). I came away curious how much of that extended family (we are now probably six generations down, maybe seven) continue to identify as Jewish and continue to practice the faith. Some relatives live in Israel, so at least some piece. It would seem a sad (from the standpoint of the Jewish people--any individual does as he sees fit) coda to such a uniquely Jewish story. It is somewhat ironic that the storyteller comes from the part that moved away from its Jewishness--or maybe that part of the family should best tell the story.

I highly recommend the show. I may need to read the book.