Alicia

A remarkable Holocaust memoir, a powerful testament to human courage and fortitude, for readers of Edith Eger’s The Choice.

‘This memoir is heartbreaking.’ Elie Wiesel, author of Night

Alicia Jurman is five-years-old when her story begins. It is 1935 and she is living in the East Polish town of Buczacz. Although brought up in an atmosphere of anti-Semitism, nothing could have prepared her for the Russian invasion of Poland and the full horror of the Nazi Occupation.

At thirteen, while fleeing the Nazis through war-ravaged Poland, Alicia began saving the lives of strangers. Her family cruelly wrenched from her, Alicia rescued other Jews from the Gestapo, led them to safe hideouts, and lent them her courage and hope. Even the sight of her mother’s brutal murder could not quash this remarkable child’s faith in human goodness – or her determination to prevail against overwhelming odds.

After the war, Alicia continued to risk her life, leading Polish Jews on an underground route to freedom in Palestine. She swore on her brother’s grave that if she survived, she would speak for her silenced family. This book is the eloquent fulfilment of that oath.

Author Biography

Alicia Appleman-Jurman (1930-2017) was a writer and lecturer. A Polish Jew, as a child she escaped the Nazis by being thrown through the window of a train taking her family to an extermination camp. Her parents and four brothers were all murdered. As a member of a resistance group, she helped to smuggle Jews out of Poland to Austria, and then on to what would become Israel. Her memoir, Alicia- Memoirs of a Survivor, is an account of her experiences of the Holocaust.