Amit Rahav, Michael Aloni and Lior Ashkenazi star in Holocaust series on Disney+
Bestselling book telling extraordinary story of family's survival comes to the screen
Francine Wolfisz is the Features Editor for Jewish News.
One person surviving the Holocaust is remarkable. But that seven members of a single family could overcome deportation, labour camps, treacherous escapes and countless life-threatening situations is nothing short of a miracle.
As author Georgia Hunter dug deeper into her family history over the course of a decade, she discovered that not only had her Polish-born grandfather, Addy Kurc, survived but so too had his four siblings and their parents. Now their story, which features in her bestselling book, We Were The Lucky Ones, has been adapted into a TV miniseries currently streaming on Disney+.
A glittering cast brings the Kurc family to life and includes The Kissing Booth’s Joey King as audacious daughter Halina, who joins the resistance; Hunters actor Logan Lerman as musically gifted son Addy; veteran Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi as family patriarch Sol and Shtisel’s Michael Aloni as son-in-law Selim. Joining them is Amit Rahav as Jacob, the second-youngest son and a talented photographer, who finds himself separated from his childhood sweetheart Bella (played by British actress Eva Feiler) as conditions in the ghetto worsen.
For Amit, best known to audiences as Yanky Shapiro in the Netflix mega-hit Unorthodox, there has been an added poignancy to stepping into the world of 1930s Poland, because he too is the descendant of a Holocaust survivor. “My grandmother is just the most amazing woman, and she remembers everything,” smiles Amit from his home in Los Angeles, having recently moved there from his native Tel Aviv. The 28-year-old actor reveals that his Polish-born grandmother, Beate, was just a toddler when she was forced into hiding during the Second World War.
“She was put on to a cart and hidden in a Christian family’s home. She was aged three when she was sent to different towns to hide, without her own family, without her parents. “There are so many unbelievable stories I heard from her growing up. The fact that the series is based on Georgia Hunter’s real family history makes me feel deeply connected to the role.”
Just like the Kurc family, Beate’s story had a fortuitous ending – both her parents survived the war and were reunited with their daughter. Once they secured permits for Israel, the family emigrated and began a new life. “For my grandma, having three children and eight grandchildren has been her biggest achievement, her biggest triumph.”
Amit says that he had visited several Nazi death camps in Poland as a teenager – “in Israel, they take us from schools as a mandatory trip” – and that Beate had accompanied his older sister when it was her turn to go with her class. “My grandma was so emotional being there with my sister. She wrote down the story of her experience and gave it to her. We have a video of my grandma just sobbing as my sister read it out aloud,” he says.
Given his own personal connection to the Holocaust, there was no hesitation to take on this latest role, and neither was there for many of the rest of the cast, he reveals. “Being part of the project felt like a privilege,” he says earnestly. “It was like it was in our DNA, this huge need to tell this story.”
There were two moments on set that the cast really began to connect with the material, Amit adds. One was when fellow actor Sam Woolf, who plays Halina’s love interest Adam, brought a small leaf with him that he had found during a pre-filming trip to Warsaw. Appreciating that the tree had stood there for decades, including during the events of the Second World War, Amit says the cast all “touched the leaf and felt this link between the past and present”. The second moment was when Hunter walked on to the set and met her “family”. Amit recalls: “It was very special to meet this woman who had spent years researching
what had happened to her own family. She brought with her so many photo albums, letters, documented memories that provided us with such an abundance of material to work from. “It was the greatest added value having her on set with us and acknowledging this show was only being made because of her. We just really wanted to bring her family’s story to life and do it justice. She was so supportive of what we were doing.”
Shot mostly in Bucharest, Romania, as well as in Malaga and Cadiz in Spain, the eight-episode series sees the Kurc family enduring several moments of physical and emotional strife, having become displaced and separated from one another. For 22-year-old Jacob, his fate is to endure the worsening conditions of the Warsaw ghetto. “He is forced to change and mature in ways that he never imagined he would have to go through,” explains Amit. “As the show goes on, he grows to become the man he never knew he could be.”
While set in a very different place and time, Amit acknowledges that his character Yanky in the critically-acclaimed series Unorthodox undergoes a similar transformation after seeing his wife Esther (played by Shira Haas) question her place in the Hasidic world.
“I feel so lucky to have been a part of that series,” recalls Amit, who had
to steep himself in Hasidic culture, learn Yiddish and wear payot for the
role. “I felt it was such a beautiful story and yet so far away from my own experience. In the end I learned so much through this project.”
He adds: “We thought it would just go out in Israel and Germany and never expected it to become so massively successful. I was so proud of our work on this story of a woman who takes control over her own life in the most difficult circumstances, after the most difficult upbringing. That was such an empowering message to any individual.”
Speaking of which, Amit says his role in We Were The Lucky Ones has
had a visceral impact on his sense of Jewishness. “It’s really made me think about our resilience, especially now as history appears to be repeating itself,” he says. “I feel prouder than ever of being Jewish, even as we face rising
antisemitism and so much misunderstanding.”
• We Were The Lucky Ones is streaming on Disney+ now
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