Alicia was smuggled home in the bottom of a cart used to haul Jewish bodies to burial. When she arrived, she found her mother and remaining brother both sick with typhus. With the help of her friend Milek, a boy whom she loved deeply, they were nursed back to health.
The Jews who were still alive after the many actions, were moved to another city which had been declared a “Judenrien”. When they arrived, they immediately began work on another bunker.
Unfortunately, they were unable to build it sufficiently large to hide all of them before the first action there happened. Alicia was determined to keep her mother and brother safe and volunteered to hide in the attic while the rest hid in the bunker. She was on her way to the attic when she heard a baby cry. There were two infants sharing the house with them. She discovered that one had fallen asleep, but the other had not drunk enough chamomile tea. She had almost finished feeding it when the SS arrived. An officer entered the room where she stood. He shot both babies through the mouth, killing them.
Alicia was rounded up with many other people and taken to a meadow to a long trench. The Germans began to shoot them, killing those in front. Suddenly, she heard shooting near her. Her friend Milek had commandeered a submachine gun and was shooting at the Germans. He screamed for her to run. She made it into the forest and ran until she could run no more.
As part of a backup plan, her family had decided that if they should be separated, they would return to their home town and wait for each other. She slowly made her way back home, working in fields for a piece of bread and a glass of buttermilk. She passed herself off as an orphan Polish or Ukrainian girl, as she spoke both languages fluently.
As agreed to early on, Alicia made her way back to Buczacz and waited for her mother. It was too dangerous to stay in there, so she made her way out into the farmlands and continued to work in the fields for food. Soon her mother found her and she had to try to work hard enough for her mother and herself. It was too dangerous for her mother to be seen. Her youngest brother Herzl had disappeared before her mother had left the ghetto in search of her. They hoped he would make it back to Buczacz. From an old schoolmate, she found out that an acquaintance of her little brother’s had pointed him out the police. He had been taken to the forest and shot.
Sometime later, Alicia came to the aid of an old man living by himself in the country. He had fits of epilepsy and she happened into him after one of these fits. The local villagers left him alone because they thought he would curse them. When winter fell, he became their savior, providing them with shelter during the bitter cold. Even when Alicia showed up with another Jewish lady and two other children she had saved from discovery by the Polish police, he allowed them all to stay. Alicia would do her best and find work at various farms in the surrounding villages to try to feed them all. Some people knew she was Jewish and gave her work and food. Others would tell her never to return, out of fear.
One day she accidentally stumbled upon another Jew in hiding. He was a furrier, making clothes for food. He told her what had happened to her father. She was now alone with her mother…everyone else had been murdered.
In March of 1944 the Germans withdrew. Freedom had come at last. Alicia and her mother returned to their native Buczacz and found an apartment. They began to survive again. It was short lived however.
A couple months after their initial freedom, the Germans pushed back and retook Buczacz. In their flight out of the city, Alicia’s mother was wounded by a piece of shrapnel and they were forced to return to the city. After several days of hiding in their apartment, they received a knock on the door. Their landlady had turned them into the Gestapo. Marched out onto the street, one of the Gestapo raised his pistol and pointed it at Alicia and fired. At the last moment, her mother threw herself in front of Alicia. She took the bullet intended for her daughter. She fulfilled a self-proclaimed prophecy. She had told Alicia that she would not survive the war, but that she knew Alicia would. She made Alicia promise to live. The Gestapo, having expended his last bullet, drug her off with the rest of the Jews into the forest to be shot. This time, Alicia bolted when the shooting started and hid in the river.
With her mother gone she felt lost. Eventually she found her way into a group of Polish youth voluntarily being shipped to Germany to work. She was shuffled onto a train with them and they were off. She was in a panic, not knowing what to do. Suddenly there were explosions and the train was halted. The door was flung open and they were instructed to run to a nearby ditch. Russian partisans had attacked the train because it was also carrying Gestapo. Another explosion hit and Alicia was hit twice by shrapnel; once in the shin and once in the buttocks. She was able to work the piece in her shin out and was never bothered by the other piece.
After the battle, the youth were rounded up and locked in the basement of some nearby building “for their own protection.” Alicia, seeing this as a means of escape convinced a girl she had befriended to help her slither out of the basement window. As she was about the run off, she noticed through a window, the Russian partisans who had been captured. Risking her own life, she freed several of them. Making good their escape, they would not allow her to remain with them and she was again on her own.
Soon after, she was befriended by a villager and his family. She worked hard for them until she was conscripted by the Germans to clean pots for the soldiers. She would have to climb into huge pots and scrub them clean. She found this advantageous as she was able to get extra food this way while scraping them clean.
One day she overheard the Germans preparing to attack a group of partisans reportedly in a section of forest nearby. She crept away, borrowed the villager’s horse and galloped off into the forest in the pouring rain. Risking her life again, she found and warned the partisans. Upon leaving the forest, she ran right into the group of soldiers sent to kill the partisans. Playing dumb, she began to cry about the horse running off and she was let free.
Sometime later, the Russians retook the area. She was again free. One day she was summoned to the Russian local headquarters. She went somewhat hesitantly, but when she arrived she was treated with honor and respect. She was the guest at a party and then was taken to the commander. It seems that she had thrice saved the live of this same group of partisans. Once when she had covered up for one of them who was raiding a potato field, again when she had rescued them after the train attack, and finally when she had warned them about the German’s sent to find them. The commander and his son (as well as others) were Russian Jews. She was awarded Hero of the Soviet Union and given papers expressing such, giving her an honorary rank of lieutenant, and freedom of movement.
Soon she returned to Buczacz and stayed for a while with some friends she had made during the ghetto days. One day, visiting some pre-war friends in another city, she was arrested with one of them on charges of blackmarketing. She spent 3 months in a Russian prison. She could have left (her papers as a Hero of the Soviet Union were quite the bargaining chip), but her friend would have remained. She opted to stay and save her friend. Eventually the girl’s brother, who was a soldier with the Russian Army, pulled some strings and freed them. She was greeted with open arms by the network of blackmarketers whom she had saved.
Her ordeals were not over however. While helping a Jewish boy stricken with depression at the loss of a leg, she found that her friend Milek had been killed by the same landmine that had wounded the other. It was time for her to move on.
Alicia traveled to Lvov, and then Krakow. She stayed with a Jewish family there who loved her like a daughter. One day she found a couple of girls crying in some bushes. They were survivors from the concentration camps. She took them home. She found more and more of them. She found a deserted house and opened an orphanage for them. She, at 15 years old, took responsibility for 25 children from 10-15 years of age. With the help of some Russian Jewish soldiers they had means to survive and even prosper selling old clothing.
Sometime later, she was approached by two of the main buyers of the clothing. They said they were part of the Brecha, a Jewish underground organization that moved Jews out of the Soviet occupied countries. They wanted her help. She had language skills, papers of freedom of movement and a medal as a Hero of the Soviet Union. Reluctantly she agreed. Before she left to start her work there, her adoptive family gave her a money belt with several thousands of dollars of cash and gold. She was told never to take the belt off.
After a couple of training runs with the Brecha involving bribes and threats to local officials to let the Jews out, she was sent on her own run. Two of her group were Jewish soldiers who had deserted from the Russian Army. They were dressed as girls. Some one noticed, however that they didn’t walk like girls. Alicia was summoned to the local Polish police station. In order to save their lives, Alicia gave the officer her belt and her future. At the end of the run, Alicia fell ill. She had always been weak after the bout with typhus and this nearly killed her.
She decided that her days were done with the Brecha and stayed in Allied occupied territory. She was relocated to Switzerland into a camp for displaced persons. It was there that she was given an opportunity to go to Israel, being smuggled in a boat. The British were blockading Israel against the wave of Jews trying to come in. There were strict rules on the number allowed in.
Eventually she made it after a failed smuggling attempt and incarceration in a camp on Cyprus. She was finally free.
This is a brief history one person who survived against all odds and still remained a caring, compassionate person. She never let her fear and instincts for survival overrule her love for her fellow being. She risked her life several times for her family and complete strangers. She lived. She prospered. Alicia Jurman now lives in California with her husband and has several children.
I’ll be reading this book. To me, just the summary of her life leads me to believe this is a book as important if not more than that of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” “Alicia Jurmans Memoirs” should be on the list of mandatory reading in Middle and/or High Schools.
I read this book during my Sophmore year of High School. It was an amazing story, really showing the good side of humanity.
stories like this always amaze me because of what they say about human psychology and emotions, not just from Alicia’s side either. I mean, when you think about it, there was some kind of mind rape on both sides, there had to be to spark such anti-semitism from gestapos and SS officers and rebellion from those as unfortunate as Alicia. Stuff like this, whether learned liked the WWII prejudices or natural, like Alicia’s will to survive and help others survive, is really quite mind boggling in its severity.
I wish I was that awesome.
that was painful to read,
not the emotions from the stories itself but the way the article is constructed…..good grief!
truely amazing! really restores your faith that somewhere sometimes goodness and truth prevail
whoa. just…. whoa
I believe such a person has an eternity of paradise awaiting them.