Alicia: My Story

Raised from the age of five in Buczacz, which was roughly a third Jewish at that time, Alicia was sheltered relatively well from the anti-Semitism that plagued her town, as well as the rest of Europe. She had many friends, both Jewish and Christian.
After the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, whereby the two genocidal dictators divided Poland between them, Buczacz fell into the Soviet zone. The Soviets began a forced Sovietization drive, and deported thousands of people to slave labour, or their deaths, who they saw as 'enemies of the Soviet Union'.Alicia recalls being offended and hurt, on behalf of her Christian friends, for whose religion she had deep respect, when the Madonna and Child were removed from their customary spot in the classroom and replaced by scowling portraits of Lenin and Stalin.
Alicia's second-oldest brother Moshe was shot by the Soviets after returning to Poland, from the harsh conditions in Russia, where he had gone for education.
In June 1941, the Germans broke their pact with the Soviets and swept through eastern Poland on their way to Russia - Operation Barbarossa had begun. The Germans, however, had an even worse plan than the Soviets had had for Europe's Jews: it was known as Endlosung (aka The Final Solution).

Alicia's father was shot, alongside 600 other Jewish community leaders, shortly after the Nazi invasion.
Alicia, and her mother and brothers were forced to leave their beautiful home, and to settle in the ghetto.
They lived under harsh laws whereby Jews were forced to wear armbands with stars of David.
Jews who tried to leave the ghetto or to enter the synagogue would be executed.
Alicia's brother Bunion was then executed by the Nazis.

While visiting a Jewish family in the town, 12 year old Alicia was arrested by the Nazis along with thousands of other Jews, but escaped from the train to the death camps, together with a band of other young people.
After Alicia's brother Zachary was shot by the Nazis She swore on his grave that if she survived she would speak for her silenced family.
This book is a powerful and unforgettable fulfilment of that oath.
It keeps us engaged and emotionally involved on every page, as we read of her struggle to survive, her irrepressible spirit, her many brushes with death. She never gave up her will to survive nor her humanity for fellow victims of the Nazis, many of whom she helped to rescue, many of whom died before her eyes.
She witnessed such horrors as babies being shot in their cribs by the Nazis.
While many of the Polish and Ukrainian neighbours helped the Nazis and joined in the killings, there were always those few that helped to keep their Jewish fellow humans alive, including a Polish family on whose farm Alicia worked.
After the war, Alicia's struggle was not over.
She was imprisoned by the Soviets and took part in the secret operation to smuggle Jews to the Land of Israel, across Europe, at a time when the British were keeping the Holocaust survivors out, often with brutal and violent methods reminiscent of the Nazis themselves.
Alicia was on the ship Theodor Herzl, carrying young Holocaust survivors to Israel, in 1946, when it was rammed by British frigates, after which British soldiers then boarded the ship and attacked the survivors, beating to death six young Jews and allowing others to drown while trying to escape.
This courageous girl, had struggled as part of the Jewish nation against three ruthless empires.

Heartrending read (1/1 people found this helpful)

If you are interested in Holocaust history then this book is a must. Your heart goes out to Alicia right from the start.
It sends a clear picture of what the Nazis were like and what horrors they were capable of, the book is very well written and it is very difficult to put down because all you want is for the family to survive.

Unbelievable - but true (5/5 people found this helpful)

I haven't even finished reading this book, but felt I must let other people know how fantastic it is. An amazing true story of courage and hope and each page is more gripping than the last. This book has given me more of an insight into what happened to the Polish Jews than anything else I have seen or read. If you're interested in this period of history then buy this book now.

Remarkable story from a remarkable woman (5/5 people found this helpful)

I am a huge reader of holocaust literature. There's something really inspiring in the way that people such as Alica survive the very worst of deprevations, and somehow manage to emerge out the other side not just as survivors but as trully remarkable human beings.

Alicia's story really is heart rending. How she didn't herself go under when she saw one member of her family after another lose their life we can only wonder at.

Although this work is biographical, it really has the feel of a novel to it, and so is a very fluent read. The only criticism I would make was that the end of the book was a little abrupt. I really felt I could have done with one final chapter on how Alica rebuilt her life in Israel and America.

Emotive, admirable, humbling and vastly educational (5/5 people found this helpful)

The only reason I bought this book was because we both share the name Alicia; I was originally sceptical that I would find the book boring and tedious yet once I had started reading I found it impossible to stop!

Alicia enables you to catch a glimpse of life for a Jew in Nazi occupied Poland; she speaks of the prejudice from all sides, loss of loved ones, the struggle to find work and food, and her eventual journey from a life of hate to one of love. It is an extremely emotional book that had my crying at many points.

I am currently 16 (roughly the same age as Alicia for most of the book) and can truly admire the courage and loyalty she shows when faced with danger; I do not believe I could have acted in such an admirable way and am humbled.

As I read the book I realized that the tale was so drastic and horrific that, if it was a story I would have found it overdone and too dramatic; the fact that this is a true story with no exagerations (the only changes were to names)I find it hard to believe that life wa so cruel for people like Alicia.

I recommend this book to everyone! If you are interested in real life under the Nazis rather than just facts and figures then this is the book to read. If the topic does not interest you then I still recommend the book as I believe everyone should be aware of the horrors that come from blind belief in the wrong things.

Alicia Appleman-Jurman

Reader Reviews:

An irrepressible spirit of survival (0/0 people found this helpful)

Heartrending read (1/1 people found this helpful)

Unbelievable - but true (5/5 people found this helpful)

Remarkable story from a remarkable woman (5/5 people found this helpful)

Emotive, admirable, humbling and vastly educational (5/5 people found this helpful)

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