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Archive photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

So Others Know: Alicia Appleman-Jurman goes to schools throughout the Bay Area to tell students about her experiences as a Jew in Poland during the Second World War.

Holocaust survivors tell stories so others remember and won't repeat

ByAlicia Upano

The Hall of Names coats the domed room at Yad Vashem in Israel with hundreds of faces. It is a visual testament to the six million Jews who were killed during Holocaust.

Within the bricks and mortar of Israel's Holocaust museum are the faces and fragments of lives that were ended during the World War II genocide, as part of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution."

For some who perished, like Bunio Jurman, all that can be found is an age (16) and where and when he died (Borki Wielki work camp, 1941).

This was Alicia Appleman-Jurman's brother. She is the sole survivor of her family, which included Bunio, three other brothers Moshe, Zachary and Herzl and both of her parents, Sigmond and Frieda. Their lives, and the millions more who were lost in the war, have lived on within her, she says.

Appleman-Jurman, 75, began telling her story of survival during the Holocaust after she came to the United States from Israel in 1952. She began speaking in schools, where students urged her to write a book.

Appleman-Jurman wrote Alicia: My Story, a book that went on to win the 1989 Christopher Award and become required reading in schools across the country.

Eight years ago, Appleman-Jurman and her husband moved from their Southern California home to the South Bay. Settling into her San Jose home, Appleman-Jurman continues to tell her story to all who will listen.

Alicia eludes death

It begins with a courageous young girl from the Polish mountains who was living in the town of Buczacz when it fell to Russia in 1939. Moshe, Appleman-Jurman's oldest brother, escaped his studies in Russia because of the country's dire conditions. The Russians found him in the Jurman home and took him to Chortkov prison, where he died. In 1941, Germany seized control of Poland. Once in power, the Germans required every Jewish man between 18 and 50 to register his identity with the police. Her father left to register and never returned.

After her brother and father were killed, Appleman-Jurman, 11 at the time, was forced with her remaining family and other Jews into a section of town labeled the Jewish ghetto. During this time while gathering wood, her brother Bunio was captured by the Germans and sent to a Nazi work camp, where he was shot.

Her brother, Zachary, tried to help four Jewish children escape from German custody but was betrayed by a non-Jewish Polish boy, who reported Zachary to the Germans. He was captured and hanged.

In the early 1940s, Appleman-Jurman was beaten and imprisoned at Chortkov prison in the Ukraine. Unconscious and presumed dead by the Germans, she was left in a pile of bodies to be buried. A Jewish family found Appleman-Jurman's warm body among the dead.

In 1944, her mother, Frieda, shielded a bullet intended for her daughter.

As a legacy to her family, Appleman-Jurman spent a significant portion of the war years and thereafter helping others to survive.

"The only way I could fight back was saving people," she says.

Today, Appleman-Jurman is part of the South Bay Holocaust Survivor Group that meets monthly at Chai House, a senior facility in San Jose. After being uprooted, Appleman-Jurman says the organization is a place of belonging.

Santa Clara County has scheduled a Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony on April 25 at the county of Santa Clara Government Center, 70 W. Hedding St., from 3:45 to 5 p.m. Alicia Appleman-Jurman will be speaking at the event. For more information, call 408.299.5151.