Alicia, My Story
Alicia Appleman-Jurman, 1988
Bantam Press
433 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780833554192
Summary
After losing her entire family to the Nazis at age 13, Alicia Appleman-Jurman went on to save the lives of thousands of Jews, offering them her own courage and hope in a time of upheaval and tragedy.
Not since The Diary of Anne Frank has a young voice so vividly expressed the capacity for humanity and heroism in the face of Nazi brutality. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 9, 1930
• Where—Rosulna, Poland
• Reared—Buczacz, Poland
• Awards—Christopher Award; Bernard Lecache Award
• Currently—lives in San Jose, California, USA (as of 1998)
Alicia Appleman-Jurman was the only daughter and the second-youngest of Sigmund and Frieda Jurman in a family of five children. Raised from the age of five in Buczacz, which was roughly 1/3 Jewish at that time, Alicia was sheltered relatively well from the anti-Semitism that plagued her town, as well as the rest of Europe. Unfortunately, this changed on September 1, 1939, when German troops invaded Poland, and she would gradually have her whole family brutally wrenched from her. (From Wikipedia.)
More
I was born in Rosulna, Poland, a small village in the Carpathian mountains. At the age of five, I moved with my family to the city of Buczacz (pronounced “boochach”) in eastern Poland. This city is located in the part of Poland which was annexed to the Soviet Union after World War II and is now part of the Ukraine.
My parents, four brothers and close relatives numbering about eighty were all killed by the Germans and their collaborators. During the war years I lived in the Ghettos of Buczacz and Kopechince and learned to survive in the forests and fields surrounding those cities. I escaped death several times. In our ghettos as well as in all of our region, the Germans killed us in “Actions”. They would surround the entire ghetto, or a neighborhood and those Jews who were found in homes and in hiding places were taken out to the meadows and forests and shot into open graves.
During my struggle to survive I was able to save several Jewish lives as well as those of two groups of Russian Partisans who were operating behind the German lines. As a witness to our tragedy I have related my story and the story of the Jewish community in our area both during and immediately after the war, in my autobiographical book Alicia-My Story which has been published by Bantam Books, Inc. The hardcover edition is now a collector’s item. A paperback edition was published in January 1990 and has been reprinted many times to date. The book has been translated into seven foreign languages and distributed throughout Europe and the countries called Six Cherry Blossoms, which is an allegory of the Holocaust.
After the Germans were defeated, I joined the "Brecha" and helped smuggle Jews out of Poland to Austria, from where others guided them to Eretz Israel. In early 1947 I sailed on the illegal immigrant ship, Theodore Herzl" hoping to land in Eretz Israel. We were caught by the British navy and sent to Cyprus, where I was interned in a British concentration camp for eight months.
In December 1947 I was one of the thousand Youth Aliyah children Golda Meier managed to get out of Cyprus. I was sent to study at a Youth Aliyah school, Mikve Israel, near Tel Aviv. When the War of Independence began in 1948 I took part in the fights against the Arab villages that threatened the lives of our students at Mikveh Israel. I was also part of the Palyam and later joined the navy's Chayl HaYam forces which fought in Jaffa.
While serving in Israeli Navy I met Gabriel Appleman, a volunteer from the United States. We were married in 1950 and came to the United States in 1952. We returned to Israel in 1969 and were there during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. We came back to the United States once more in 1975.
For the last 45 years, I have spoken in synagogues, churches and schools, telling my story and the story of the people in my part of Poland and how we survived. Most important, I tell the story of how we did fight back during those years…the story of brave people, mostly children, who did not survive to tell the story themselves. I have spent week-ends with youth groups such as Adat Noar and have been called upon to speak at teacher’s seminars and public schools by the ADL in Southern California.
When I speak I tell my story simply, but I can see that I reach into the hearts of my listeners. I do not use notes or read my talks. It is not necessary because I speak about my own experiences. Although I have a slight accent, I have a good command of English and have been told that I speak well and that I do not lose my audience. Some of the groups I have spoken to have been very large, the greatest being thirteen thousand people at the Long Beach Arena in California, where I addressed a convention of International Networking Enterprises, which is associated with the Amway Corporation. (From Wikipedia, courtesy of Ms. Appleman-Jurman.)
Book Reviews
A young girl's experience of the Nazi pogrom in her Polish hometown is related with an immediacy undimmed by time in her autobiography. In 1942, the author and her family undergo a brutal separation. Thirteen-year-old Alicia escapes her captors, fleeing through fields and woods, encountering fellow refugees and occasionally finding safe harbors. Although she sees her mother's wanton murder and endures physical and mental deprivation, the teenager is supported by faith in family and in the goodness of people. Capable of rallying others, she eventually heads a group who settle in Palestine. In 1949, she marries an American in Haifa and moves to the United States. Long and on occasion rambling, her story contributes to an infamous history as a tale, not only of survival, but of active resistance to oppression.
Publishers Weekly
A Polish Jew, the author re-creates her efforts to survive in Nazi-dominated, war-torn Poland. Between the ages of ten and 15, she suffered terrible hardships and encountered numerous brushes with death. This is a potentially useful addition to Holocaust literature, for although she never experienced the death camps, Appleman-Jurman lived in constant peril and managed to survive only through an extraordinary combination of luck and street sense. Unfortunately, the heavy use of dialogue reconstructed more than 40 years later has an unsettling effect on the mood and plausibility of this interesting and frequently horrifying survival narrative. Still, public libraries should consider. —Mark R. Yerburgh, Trinity Coll. Lib., Burlington, Vt.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Alicia, My Story:
1. The obvious place to start any discussion is with the remarkable courage of the book's real-life heroine—Alicia Jurman. From where do you suppose her inner-strength comes? Point out specific instances in the book where you find her perseverance and fortitude especially remarkable. Can you imagine how you might have acted under those same circumstances?
2. What did it mean, as Alice describes it, to be a Jew in Eastern Europe in the years leading up to World War II? Describe her experiences of anti-Semitism in her community? Once the Nazi invasion begins, how do the family's Polish neighbors react? Are all Poles in this book anti-Semitic?
3. What inspires anti-Semitism, then and now? Do you believe that hostility toward Jews has declined in post-war Eastern Europe?
4. Talk about Alicia's capture and ordeal in Chortkov prison. What prompts such selfless bravery as that of Jules and Sala Gold?
5. Alicia's friend Milek is another remarkable child. Talk about all he does to save Alicia's life? What do we later learn about him?
6. In her disguise as a gentile presant girl working the fields, how does she mistakenly reveal her true identity?
7. What can we learn about the redemptive power of aiding others in times of great danger—especially Alicia's protection of orphans even younger than she, as well as her work to save members of the Soviet resistance?
8. Even once the war was over, Alicia's struggles continue. Describe her efforts to smuggle Jews to Palestine. Why were the British intent on preventing Holocaust survivors from settling in there? What was your reaction when British frigates ram the Theodor Herzl?
9. In what way is Alicia changed by her ordeals? How does the Holocaust and all she has experienced affect her faith, both her religious beliefs and her beliefs in humanity?
10. What was your experience reading Alicia, My Story? How did it make you feel? Has this memoir altered your view of humanity...or affected your personal faith?
11. Have you read other memoirs of the Holocaust—The Diary of Anne Frank, or Elie Weisel's Night? Perhaps you've read (or watched films of) fictional accounts: The Reader...or The Boy in the Striped Pajamas? How does Alicia, My Story compare to these other works?
12. Reading Alicia, My Story, what have you learned about this period of history that you didn't know before? What lessons can we—people and nations—learn from Alicia's memoir?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page (summary)