Alicia

I read a lot of Holocaust-related stories in middle school. As morbid as it sounds, they were so interesting, and so heartbreaking to read. There are quite a few more still sitting in my closet, but this was my favorite, and probably the one that got me into the topic. A really great story,

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particularly because it's a true one.

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This is probably the most remarkable memoir I have ever read. Alicia Jurman was a young Jewish girl living in eastern Poland and was nine years old when the Second World War broke out and her part of Poland was invaded first by the Soviet Union then, less than two years later, by Germany when it in

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turn invaded the Soviet Union. Her immediate family members were killed one by one, her father and all four of her brothers. She and her weakened mother spent time moving around the Polish countryside, trying to find food and shelter, Alicia seeking work on Polish and Ukrainian farms using various false identities (she spoke both languages fluently). She narrowly escaped being sent to the camps or shot a number of times through a combination of amazing resourcefulness, bravery and a considerable measure of good luck. Her home town of Buczacz was liberated by the Russians in March 1943 and for a short time, Alicia and her mother and other surviving Jews started to try to rebuild a reasonably normal life. However, after a couple of months the Nazis recaptured the town, they were betrayed and the SS shot Alicia's mother. Alicia and other surviving Jews were taken to a meadow outside the town for a mass shooting, from which Alicia was one of the few who managed to escape. Despite the horrible betrayals, there were also incidents of kindness from some local farmers and a lovely, generous old man who kept bees and sheltered not only Alicia and her mother, but six other Jews in his small cottage. After the second and final liberation and the end of the war, Alicia tried to help Jewish orphan children wandering the streets by setting up an informal orphanage, though only aged 15 herself. Shockingly, the few surviving Jews were still targetted and abused by many individual Poles and the Polish authorities, who did not want to be reminded how they had helped the Nazis to oppress them. Finally, the huge sense of alienation from Polish society led Alicia to make the decision to go to what would slightly later be the state of Israel, as well as helping to run an escape route for other Polish Jews who wanted to leave. One of the most shameful new things I learned from this account was how the British authorities, in trying to limit immigration to Palestine, even attacked and boarded the ship Alicia was on, killing some of the Jewish orphan children in the process. I could say a lot more about this remarkable 400 plus page book, which the author was driven to write in the 1980s to tell her story before it was too late; as she says of her fellow European Jews, "they cannot forget, and they cannot bear the thought that the world will not remember. As they grow older, it becomes more and more important to them that no one be permitted to forget."

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Amazing WWII memoir by Polish Jewish girl who survived it. Very remarkable story and great history of what was happening in eastern Poland during the War.

Good story of helping holocaust victims survive.