Sumith Prasad
The eighth and final episode of Hulu’s historical drama series ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ ends with Caroline and Addy hosting the rest of the Kurc family in Rio de Janeiro. Even though Jakob and Bella fail to join them after their move to the United States, the family cherishes their reunion after a long, life-threatening war. Upon losing their home and business in Radom, Sol and Nechuma settle in the city. Caroline hosts her in-laws warmly. In reality, she didn’t spend long in Brazil after most of the Kurcs settled in the Latin American country. Like Nechuma, she became a matriarch but away from her in-laws!
Caroline Courts’ Life After World War II
Caroline, with her husband Addy, celebrated the end of World War II by welcoming a new member to her family. She gave birth to her first daughter, Kathleen, in 1946 in Rio de Janeiro. The child’s birth was followed by the Kurcs’ arrival in the city. As the series depicts, Caroline shared her husband’s happiness of reuniting with his family. However, by then, the couple had decided to move to the United States to build their own family. They chose Massachusetts as their new home. The move didn’t mean they were completely cut off from the Kurcs. Jakob and Maryla, the inspiration behind Bella, were a thousand miles away in Illinois.
After Caroline and Addy’s move to Massachusetts in 1947, the former gave birth to two more children: Isabelle and Timothy. The family lived in a big house with floor-to-ceiling picture windows and a cedar sauna in the basement. After arriving in the United States, Caroline and Addy became an American couple in every way. Her husband changed his name from Adolf Kurc to Eddy Courts and became an American citizen. The couple never talked about their World War II experiences with their children. Eventually, they learned to move forward from such a chapter of their lives without cutting ties with their family members.
In 1978, Isabelle gave birth to Georgia Hunter, the author of ‘We Were the Lucky Ones,’ the source novel of the series. After Addy’s death, Caroline revealed to Georgia her partial Jewish and Polish ancestry. The author learned that her grandparents met in Rio towards the end of the deadliest war in human history. She also came to know from Caroline that her grandfather is a Holocaust survivor. The conversation with Caroline changed Georgia’s life considerably, motivating her to unveil the history of her Polish ancestors.
Caroline Courts’ Death
Caroline Courts died on an unknown date. Her family has chosen to keep her cause of death private as well. Georgia dedicated her novel to her grandmother, stating, “I am especially indebted to my late grandmother, Caroline, for quietly safeguarding the seeds of my grandfather’s story until the time was right to pass them along.” Before her death, Caroline reunited with several of the surviving members of the Kurc family in July 2000. The gathering was attended by thirty-two family members from cities ranging from Miami to Rio de Janeiro and Paris to Tel Aviv.
Caroline joined Isabelle and family members of the latter’s generation on the back porch of Georgia’s house on Martha’s Vineyard to talk about their loved ones. “My grandmother’s eyes brightened as she recounted meeting my grandfather for the first time in Rio. ‘It took me years to learn Portuguese,’ she said. ‘Eddy learned English in weeks.’ She spoke of how obsessed my grandfather was with American idioms and how she didn’t have the heart to correct him when he botched one in conversation,” Georgia wrote about Caroline in ‘We Were the Lucky Ones.’
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