Alicia My Story, Book Summary Essay, Research Paper

The main character in this story is a Jewish girl named Alicia. When the book

starts she is ten years old, she lives in the Polish town of Buczacz with her four brothers,

Moshe, Zachary, Bunio, and Herzl, and her mother and father . The holocaust experience

began subtly at first when the Russians began to occupy Buczacz. When her brother

Moshe was killed at a Boys School in Russia and her father was gathered up by

German authorities, the reality of the whole situation quickly became very real. Her father

was taken away shortly after the Russians had moved out and the Germans began to

occupy Buczacz. Once the Germans occupied, they moved the Jewish population of

Buczacz into mass ghettos. Alicia and the rest of her family had to share a house with

several other families which had also been driven out of there homes. The only source of

income in this situation was to sell things at the marketplace, and even there, Jews were

forbidden. Alicia went anyway and sold what she could for food and money.

One day her brother Bunio disappeared from the ghetto. Alicia and her family

found out later that he had been taken to a work camp, but that they could send food

packages to him. Shortly after this, Alicia was taken into custody by German officials and

put on a train to another work camp. Alicia managed to escape from this train by jumping

through a small window. She found her way to a river which led her back to the ghetto.

By this time several people in the ghetto had been feeling the effects of the impoverished

conditions. Starvation, Typhoid, and other diseases, were beginning to take its toll on the

people who lived in the ghetto. Then one day, Alicia found out that her brother Bunio had

been killed in the work camp. A boy had escaped so they lined up all the boys and shot

every fourth one

.

As time progressed, Alicia began assuming more responsibility for the daily tasks

of the family such as going out and trading for more food in places other than the

marketplace. While this was going on, Zachary and a few other boys from the ghetto had

been forming a sort of resistance. One day Alicia was informed that her brother had been

hanged. After Zachary s death, Alicia was befriended by a woman named Bella. She met

many good friends in the ghetto including a future friend as well as savior, Milek

.

Months later, Alicia and several other people were rounded up and sent to a prison in

Chortkov. Here the conditions were very poor. Every day more and more people were

taken out and shot. On the inside of the cells it was a cesspool of germs and diseases.

Every morning the jailkeepers would go around the cell and kick people to see if they

were still alive. One of these times Alicia was taken for dead and put onto a wagon with

other bodies. The driver of the wagon found her, nursed her back to better health and

then brought her back to the ghetto.

During this time, before, and after she returned to the ghetto attempts to rid the

ghettos of Jews were called actions . To escape being caught by the German police who

took part in the actions, they built large bunkers to hide from their captors. After several

of these actions, the Buczacz ghetto had been emptied by more than half. At this point the

time came to move to a new ghetto.

Alicia had been in this new ghetto only a short time when another action occurred.

This time Alicia was captured and brought to a mass grave with a multitude of other

Jews. Just when Alicia was about to be shot Milek took a gun from one of the shooters

and began shooting other officers. Alicia took advantage of this opportunity, as she had

many others, and ran for her life. She ran fast and far until she found herself coming into a

town which was surrounded with tilled fields. She discovered she could work in exchange

for a small amount of food. She worked hard in these fields and was able to let her

mother in Buczacz know that she was safe. Alicia was reunited with her mother and they

returned to this community where they lived for about a year. She also found out that her

youngest brother Herzl had been taken away and killed Alicia would work at these fields

and get food, she would bring some back to her mother who, because of poor health, was

resting in seclusion most of the day.. One day they met a nice old man that was sort of an

outcast from the rest of the community. He let them stay with him and another Jewish

family that he was taking care of in his shack. They stayed here during the winter while

Alicia still searched for food, in the process, making many friends.

News came one day that the Germans were beginning to fall back from the

Russian fronts and Germany s grip on the Jews in Poland was weakening. This news

made Alicia and her mother move away from the old man who helped them. Alicia and her

mother had formed a very close friendship with the kindly man. When Alicia and her

mother arrived in Buczacz they moved into a regular apartment and began to live a

semi-normal life.

It was not long after Alicia had moved back into Buczacz that the Germans took

over the town again. In this raid on the Jews, Alicia s mother was killed by the Germans.

Alicia was taken to another prison where she would later be transported to another mass

grave. While she was waiting, she devised a plan to escape the mass grave by running

down a hillside and into a river. When they were lined up to be shot she ran to the river.

She hid there all night and once again she had escaped the Germans. As she made her way

back, she became friends with a group Russian Jews who were fighting with the Russians.

She even earned a medal from them because she had helped a number of them escape from

a prison cell. Her bravery was not overlooked.

Returning to Buczacz she found that there wasn t much left for her there, so she

moved away with a person to a nearby town. She was in this town less than a few hours

when her and her friend were taken into custody by the Russian police. What had

happened was that her friend was suspected of selling things in the black market ( which

she was ) and the police wanted to find out who was buying things from her. Over a span

of 8 months they were kept but finally they were released. They received a lot of money

from people that had been saved by their withholding of evidence. Alicia and her friend

took this money and bought a train ticket to Lodz. They were stopped in Lvov because

they went to get some tea while stopped at a station, but the train took off without them

and they left all of their belongings on the train. Next they boarded a train to Krakow,

and parted ways there. In Krakow, Alicia was staying at a rather large house with another

family. She built a sort of orphanage by gathering up homeless children from the

neighborhood. She lived with this family for a long time, and during this time she learned

about a way that she could go to Eretz Island, Israel where she could be safe. She left her

orphanage and went on a long journey where she met many people that were like her, in

that she didn t like to see people suffer.

Alicia made it to Israel but was taken by British border patrol officers to a jail on

Cypress for coming into the country illegally. She was then released from Cyprus.