Alicia

by Alicia Appleman, Gabriel Appleman (Foreword by)

Overview

After losing her entire family to the Nazis at age 13, Alicia Appleman-Jurman went on to save the lives of thousands of Jews, offering them her own courage and hope in a time of upheaval and tragedy. Not since The Diary of Anne Frank has a young voice so vividly expressed the capacity for humanity and heroism in the face of Nazi brutality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553282184
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/07/1989
Pages:	433
Sales rank:	276,403
Product dimensions:	6.82(w) x 10.96(h) x 0.85(d)
Lexile:	880L (what's this?)

About the Author

Alicia Appleman was a writer and lecturer. She was the author of Alicia: My Story. She died in 2017.

What People are Saying About This

Elie Wiesel

This memoir is heartbreaking. I hope it will be read by Jews and non-Jews alike.
—Elie Wiesel, author of Night

Editorial Reviews

A young girl's experience of the Nazi pogrom in her Polish hometown is related with an immediacy undimmed by time in her autobiography. In 1942, the author and her family undergo a brutal separation. Thirteen-year-old Alicia escapes her captors, fleeing through fields and woods, encountering fellow refugees and occasionally finding safe harbors. Although she sees her mother's wanton murder and endures physical and mental deprivation, the teenager is supported by faith in family and in the goodness of people. Capable of rallying others, she eventually heads a group who settle in Palestine. In 1949, she marries an American in Haifa and moves to the United States. Long and on occasion rambling, her story contributes to an infamous history as a tale, not only of survival, but of active resistance to oppression. Major ad/promo. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A Polish Jew, the author re-creates her efforts to survive in Nazi-dominated, war-torn Poland. Between the ages of ten and 15, she suffered terrible hardships and encountered numerous brushes with death. This is a potentially useful addition to Holocaust literature, for although she never experienced the death camps, Appleman-Jurman lived in constant peril and managed to survive only through an extraordinary combination of luck and street sense. Unfortunately, the heavy use of dialogue reconstructed more than 40 years later has an unsettling effect on the mood and plausibility of this interesting and frequently horrifying survival narrative. Still, public libraries should consider. Mark R. Yerburgh, Trinity Coll. Lib., Burlington, Vt.

Library Journal