Author(s): Alicia Appleman-Jurman

Gay Biography

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 prepare this young girl for the Russian invasion of Poland and the full horror of the Nazi Occupation. When Alicia was thirteen, she fled the Nazis through the forests and fields of Poland. Despite her youth, she rescued other Jews from the grip of the Gestapo. At the end of the war, Alicia, whose parents and four brothers had all perished in the Holocaust, risked her life again - this time leading other survivors from Poland to Palestine through an underground route. Her capacity for heroism in the face of brutality and evil shines through, and her story cannot easily be forgotten. Told simply and modestly, this is a remarkable tribute to courage and determination, and how one young woman survived the horrors of war-torn Europe.