Survivor Teaches Holocaust Lesson

Alicia Appleman-Jurman was just a child when she learned a hard lesson about human dignity and courage.

Through stories about her life as a Holocaust survivor, the acclaimed author delivered that lesson Wednesday at Nicolas Junior High School, captivating 450 seventh- and eighth-grade students.

Although she never lived in a concentration camp where millions of Jews were killed, Appleman-Jurman and her family were sent to an open ghetto in her Polish hometown when the Germans invaded in 1941.

“I was 11 at the time,” the 67-year-old woman said. “They told us, ‘You cannot have a home. You cannot have food. You cannot have a father. You cannot, you cannot, you cannot.”

The girl was kicked out of school because she was Jewish, but she loved learning so much that she found a way to secretly get her education, at least for three weeks. She observed a class while perched in a tree outside the classroom window until the teacher asked an algebra question.

As she eagerly raised her hand to answer the question, she fell out of the tree and the teacher came out to tell her never to return. She recalled saying: “OK, but one day, if I get out of this war, I am going to go to school forever.”

Today, Appleman-Jurman, author of the award-winning book “Alicia: My Story,” frequently visits schools to talk about her experiences.

“This ability to enter a classroom is a gift,” she told the students, urging them to value their education.

She also told of the killing of her father, Sigmund Jurman, and brothers, Moshe, Brunio, Zachary and Herzl. Appleman-Jurman found her oldest brother Zachary, a 17-year-old resistance fighter, hanging from a tree in a prison yard, after he had been missing for three days.

The 12-year-old girl was sitting under the tree crying when a Ukrainian prison guard pointed a gun at her head and said: “I will shoot you.” Appleman-Jurman angrily replied, “Go ahead and shoot me.”

Her life was inexplicably spared, and when Zachary was buried, she made a pledge on his grave. “If I live, I shall be his silenced voice,” she said, not realizing she later would become the voice for her entire family.

In 1942, she was taken to a prison where she drank water contaminated with typhoid germs and was beaten by an SS soldier for telling him, “You are a devil.”

Left for dead, the girl was buried alive. “I woke up two and a half weeks later in a strange room,” she remembered. A Jewish man in charge of the burials had lifted her out of the grave and nursed her back to health.

Appleman-Jurman’s 80-minute presentation Wednesday ended with this advice: “You have to realize that every person must live with dignity in this country, and everyone must be protected, because once the protection of the law is removed from any of our citizens, this is how a Holocaust starts.”

Appleman-Jurman will speak again Friday at 8:15 a.m. at the school, 1100 W. Olive Ave. The public is welcome to attend.