UNIVERSITY SPEAKER TALKS ABOUT SURVIVING THE HOLOCAUST

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- As a Jew growing up in Poland during World War II, Alicia Appleman-Jurman lived through a hellish time.

Appleman-Jurman survived the holocaust, but her parents, four brothers and about 80 close relatives were all killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.

She has written about that nightmarish time in her autobiography: "Alicia My Story."

Since moving to the United States in 1952, Appleman-Jurman has spent much of her time on the lecture circuit, recounting the horrors she experienced in World War II.

Last year she spoke to more than 40,000 students across the nation, ranging from fifth-graders to university students.

Monday she visited Southeast Missouri State University, where she spoke to seven different classes. She followed that up with a public lecture in the University Center Ballroom Monday night. The lecture was sponsored by Southeast's Student Activities Council.

In an interview prior to the lecture, she recounted the horrors she witnessed while growing up in Poland.

"I saw it as a child and I remember it well," she said. The Nazis "had no mercy whatsoever."

She said she saw Jewish babies shot by SS troops. "They were murdering everybody." She recalled seeing an SS soldier return a dropped doll to a little girl right before "he shot her face away."

Appleman-Jurman said she spent three years, from 1982 to 1985, writing her autobiography. "When I wrote this book I went back to the past and became this young girl again."

For her the past brings back painful memories. "I have gone through such a hell. When I read this book I cry."

Just talking about the past brings tears to her eyes. "After I speak I come home and crawl into bed like a wounded animal," she said.

Appleman-Jurman said she feels it's important to remind people of the horrors of the holocaust in an effort to prevent such "evil" from occurring again.

Appleman-Jurman was 9 years old when Poland was invaded in 1939. The country was occupied by Soviet troops for two years before being occupied by Germany.

One of her brothers died in prison in 1940 after being arrested by Soviet soldiers, who at that time were allies with Germany.

When the German troops came to her hometown of Buczacz in what was then eastern Poland (now a part of the Soviet Union), they rounded up 600 of the town's leading Jewish citizens, including Appleman-Jurman's father.

She subsequently found out that her father, along with the others, had been killed.

Later in the war, the Nazis rounded up her brother, Bunio, along with 500 other Jewish boys. They were taken to a work camp. When one of them tried to escape, the Germans lined up all of the boys and shot every 10th one. Bunio, who was 15 years old, was one of the boys shot by the Nazis.

Another brother, Zachary, who helped organize a resistance group, was hanged.

A fourth brother, Herzl, died in 1943, shot by a Ukrainian policeman.

Her mother died in 1944.

Appleman-Jurman recalled that a member of the Nazi SS "was going to shoot me and my mother threw herself in front of me."

He pulled the trigger again in an effort to shoot Appleman-Jurman, but the gun was empty. She was subsequently dragged off to prison.

Appleman-Jurman said she was one of about 200 Jews marched off to a mass grave site, where they were to be gunned down.

When the shooting started, she said, she bolted for a nearby river where she managed to elude detection by hiding in a hollow tree.

Throughout the war, she said, many Jews were slaughtered. They were machine-gunned and buried in mass graves. "Over 1 million of us died like that."

In all, 6 million Jews died in World War II.

When the war began, Appleman-Jurman was one of about 18,000 Jews living in Buczacz, a town with a total population of 80,000.

During the Nazi occupation, as many as 40,000 Jews from Buczacz and surrounding towns were massacred, she said.

Of that total, about 5,000 were children. Appleman-Jurman said she was one of only five of those children who survived the war.

In many towns, the entire Jewish population was wiped out.

"You had to wear a band with the Star of David on it," she recalled. "Anybody who wanted to kill you could kill you."

Non-Jewish residents often informed on their Jewish neighbors, she said.

Appleman-Jurman was imprisoned several times. She recalled being beaten.

She said she and other Jews were deliberately served typhoid-infected water. The Nazis would then send the infected Jews back to the ghettos where the disease would spread throughout the Jewish population, she explained.

Appleman-Jurman became deathly sick from typhoid fever; so much so that the Germans thought she was dead.

She said she was buried by Jews, who then "dug me up" after German soldiers left the burial site.