Why WWII and Holocaust dramas like 'We Were the Lucky Ones' are more important than ever

TV shows and movies are turning back the clock 80 years to tell stories from one of the darkest periods in history.

Several series set during the Holocaust, from Hulu's "We Were the Lucky Ones" (streaming Fridays) and Peacock's "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" (May 2) to National Geographic's "A Small Light"(2023) and Oscar-winning film "The Zone of Interest," are streaming now. And if you widen the focus to World War II stories, the list includes "Masters of the Air" (Apple TV+), "All the Light We Cannot See" (Netflix), "The New Look" (Apple) and this year's best picture winner, "Oppenheimer."

It's a surprising resurgence of the genre, which has been around since the war itself but reached its peak in the 1990s and early 2000s, when films and shows such as "Schindler's List," "Band of Brothers" and "The Pianist" moved audiences. It may be a coincidence, but the timing of these stories is significant as populism gains around the world, the U.S. nears a crucial presidential election and two major conflicts (the wars in Ukraine and Gaza) create near-daily headlines. Holocaust stories offer warnings that resonate in 2024.

The aphorism endures: If we can't learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it. And it feels more important than ever to revisit our history, even its darkest parts.

"Lucky Ones" is a superb series featuring great performances and writing. But it also tells a Holocaust story that's both vital and likely unfamiliar to many Americans. Most of the Jewish Kurc family is living in Radom, Poland, at the outset of the war, which begins in 1939 when the Nazis invade the country, followed shortly by a Soviet invasion from the East.

The Kurcs are separated and suffer terrible trauma as their business and home are taken away and several end up in a ghetto. Under Soviet occupation in the eastern part of Poland, two family members are arrested and brought to Siberia to do hard labor, while others including Halina (Joey King) work for the underground resistance movement. Favored son Addy (Logan Lerman) lives in Paris as the war breaks out and eventually gets a visa to Argentina, but he is stuck on a refugee ship held by the Vichy French government in Africa.

Most American kids learn that Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and started World War II, but they don't know the real experiences of the Polish and Jewish people depicted by "Lucky Ones." And it's a true story, based on author Georgia Hunter's 2017 book about her own family's history. The war was full of so many more experiences than we typically learn about. The world's current conflicts are likewise complicated and human, too.

The Kurc story, about the displacement of Jewish people and told from their perspective, hasn't really been depicted before in Hollywood, which tends to focus on sadistic Nazi war criminals or the horrors faced by Holocaust victims. The story has "12 distinct Jewish characters at the center of it," Erica Lipez, an executive producer on "Lucky Ones," told reporters in February. "I'm so happy to see projects about this period of time, but they are often from the perspective of the perpetrators or the people trying to help the Jews."

"Tattooist" also focuses on Jews, seen in flashbacks at a concentration camp and in the present day as a survivor recounts his experiences. It's a love story, unrelenting and terrible but also full of feeling, based on real people who found one another in the most horrific of places. Last year's "Light" centered on Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who helped hide Anne Frank's family in the secret annex in Amsterdam.

Most unconventional of all is "Zone," set just outside Auschwitz in a mansion, where real-life Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) lives with his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), their five children and a dog. The family goes about their daily lives while the horrors are heard only in the background from behind a wall and never shown. Director Jonathan Glazer, who is Jewish, said in his controversial Oscar acceptance speech that the movie marked an attempt to use the past to reckon with the present. "All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present − not to say 'Look what they did then' but rather 'Look what we do now.' Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It’s shaped all of our past and present."

A 2020 survey found a "shocking" lack of awareness and understanding of the Holocaust and World War II among millennials and Generation Z, while their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents lived through it or knew those who did. Popular culture is one of the most important ways we pass on collective memory and choose what matters in our society.

This is a time in history that is not best learned through dry memorization but through visceral storytelling. We need it more than ever.