Alicia: My Story Quotes
"Perhaps I was in Israel to appease my conscience, my feeling of guilt that I had not known enough."
"There was a bond of mutual experience between Alicia and her friends... and in those days, in my ignorance, I was jealous."
"Reading about the Holocaust did not have the same impact as living with someone who had been part of it."
"Jews who survived the war in Europe are driven. They cannot forget, and they cannot bear the thought that the world will not remember."
"There are still important stories to be told and facts to be recorded, especially today, when there are those who would like to rewrite history."
"The Nazis could not have almost completely destroyed the Jews of Poland had there been resistance to this by their neighbors."
"The real world is not black or white but many shades and colors."
"It describes the actions of real people in a very unreal environment."
"Part of being Jewish in Poland was learning to live with anti-Semitism."
"I realized suddenly that there was a lot going on that we children did not know."
"I felt a calm settling over me. My hands worked steadily as I tore up a sheet and bandaged Zachary’s arm."
"But how can we wait, I thought, the baby needs to be fed."
"One late afternoon when I returned home I found two little girls, about five or six years old, sitting on my bed."
"I thought, how heavy with sorrow are the hearts of Jewish mothers."
"Poor Mama, how she must have worried about me."
"I hoped God would punish them for their evil deeds."
"I knew that my mother had told me about this."
"What a wonderful word for a child in the ghetto. A spark of light in the darkness."
"He had been hoping, he told us, now almost crying, to eventually find a safer place for the girls, and for us, as soon as spring came."
"You can trust me. You will be in very safe hands."
"I don’t know how long I will live, but I will try to live long enough to see the Germans rot in hell. I will see them defeated, you’ll see!"
"Those who survived the action would have to move to the Kopechince ghetto."
"If I live, I would come back someday and get it out. I was sure of one thing. I would not let the Germans take it away from me, as they had my earrings."
"Now we will arrive in another ghetto after the Gestapo had killed as many of its inhabitants as they could find."
"So I squatted down and began to weed between the young potato plants."
"The main items in our diet were little grain patties that we would bake on top of the stove."
"If you can make someone laugh, I have always felt, you can win them over."
"Lost in the fields at the mercy of murderers, three innocent human beings were to be hunted down like wild animals."
"Hunger and fear had left deep circles around their eyes, which seemed to have sunk deeply into their sockets."
"It was wise not to cross inside a wheat field if it could be avoided, since even with the greatest care some sort of trail would be left behind."
"I have discovered something very interesting," she said. "Now that it is close to harvest time and the wheat is ripe, I have been chewing on the grains."
"You will have to speak with Wujciu about them," she said, but added, "Please do it very gently; he isn’t feeling very well today."
"Why? What ill has come of this? Don’t you have company now? Isn’t your laundry and cooking done for you?"
"I am a Jew," I blurted out, trying not to panic.
"You know, Wujciu, they say in the village that it is going to be a very cold winter, and these are the only clothes I own."
"There was a feeling of embarrassment among us, a sense of guilt for having survived."
"Heads turned away, tears came to the eyes; there was a constant pantomime of tragedy."
"One person would raise his eyebrows questioningly; the other would spread his open palms in a gesture of futility."
"Conversations were always brief. The question, 'And who else?' and then heads would shake sorrowfully."
"Still stricken with grief, they had no choice but to let events guide them into actions needed for daily survival."
"The flowing tears were beginning to have their curative effect, to bring back an awareness of life."
"We knew all too well what this meant. With the return of the Germans, our lives were once again in grave danger."
"My heart beat wildly. With the Germans back and my mother too injured to be moved, what would we do?"
"I know you are a smart girl, and I know you can get there without any trouble."
"I was probably almost insane with rage and frustration, and with the realization of still another painful loss."
"I don’t know why I didn’t just leave quickly when faced by that angry man with the gun."
"Everyone should believe in something or somebody, and right now, the way I see it, God needs us to believe in Him."
"I was told that the Jews who tried to reclaim their homes or other property simply disappeared, never to be seen again."
"We kept those thoughts to ourselves during the day, but my nightmares always included them."
"I am not implying anything. I am just trying to tell you that I can’t leave without my friend."
"It was strange to sit there and eat with him. We kept looking at each other."
"I realized that while I felt I couldn’t live without those I loved, neither could I the with them."
"For us the constant search for other survivors was more important than consideration of boundaries, distances, and dangers."
"I thought it was terribly funny and started to laugh."
"He seemed so much more grown-up since I had last seen him."
"I have two very influential brothers, and they will bring us over to Boston, where they live."
"What do you want from us? You have been gone for three and a half months."
"I have been in prison for the last three and a half months. I was nearly sent to Siberia."
"Three and a half months was a lifetime during the postwar days."
"You resemble one of my nieces very much. We could tell my brothers that their niece survived."
"I will use my own name which, as you know, is Alicia Jurman."
"Eretz Israel were household words in our home, and I thought of Hebrew as my second language."
"Alicia dear, this gift is a token of recognition of what you did for some of us in Chernovtsy."
"He was fighting the Germans. I would have helped anyone who fought the Germans."
"In our orphanage we often put our arms around each other, drawing warmth from this innocent show of affection."
"I guess I was acting like a young girl who sometimes says one thing but wants another."
"Just two, that is all," I said firmly, but I crossed my fingers.
"I was so angry that I almost wished it would happen, that the Poles would come and we could fight them."
"I was beginning to feel a chill creeping into my heart."
"Don’t worry about it," I said, pushing away my fear.
"I was even more ashamed of my behavior when I opened the package that Vic left for me."
"For hours I just lay in my bed and cried for my parents and brothers, for my cousins, and for Alicia, who deep inside herself was afraid to love again."
"I believed then, as I do now, that if the Jewish people had the right to live, then they also had the right to live in their homeland."
"When my mother told me that night in Buczacz, 'You must live, Alicia,' I knew she also meant, 'Even if you have to fight to do it.'"
"Watching Paris's twinkling lights as we moved along the highway, I thought about all I had heard about what was done to the French Jews during the Nazi occupation."
"All those schools, and where was my formal education? But I had indeed been educated—in the art of survival."
"Neither did I," said the man. "Neither did any of us. But we have to get as many people into Eretz Israel as we possibly can, you know that."
"It was funny really. All those schools, and where was my formal education?"
"I hadn’t survived so that I could sleep in a coffin."
"I knew the man was right, and I was truly ashamed of myself."
"I felt too agitated with thoughts of the past and of the future to rest."
"Our ancient hope still lives: To be a free people in Zion."