2008 Woodie Awards
Holocaust survivor, authoer visits campus
Quang Do
Issue date: 4/23/07 Section: News
- Page 1 of 2 next >
She was 13 years old when her entire family was killed on separate occasions in a mass genocide during the 1940s when millions of people were persecuted and slaughtered in Europe.
At the age of 14 she was awarded with a medal and became an officer for her cadet services on the Russian seaboard.
By the time she turned 15 she was a smuggler and leader of an orphanage that nobody had wanted, she said to an audience of about 25 people in the San Jose State University Hoover Hall lounge on April 18.
Alicia Appleman-Jurman, a holocaust survivor and award-winning author of the memoir, "Alicia - My Story," came to SJSU last week during Holocaust Genocide Week to commemorate the past and share her personal experiences during World War II.
Appleman-Jurman participated in multiple events last week including a discussion about Holocaust denial, said Ruth Geffner, staff member of Hillel of Silicon Valley, which partnered with the SJSU Jewish Student Union for last week's genocide memorial.
When Appleman-Jurman spoke about her story in Hoover Hall, she had technological support with various equipments including a microphone that helped her interact with the audience.
"Come to the movie," said Elliot Fine, a sophomore majoring in international business, who called his acquaintances on a cell-phone before the presentation got underway.
A video presentation was shown of a speech that Appleman-Jurman gave in 1993, which she said was to an audience of 4,500 people at Ricks College in Idaho - today known as Brigham Young University-Idaho.
Appleman-Jurman said that her 1993 speech still gets shown at colleges all over the United States and Canada, and that she still has phone conversations with students who saw the video.
She got married at the age of 20, Appleman-Jurman said, which led her to go to Holland with her American husband where she began to write her story.
From 1982 to 1985, she said, "I wasn't cooking … I just wrote," - and every time she finished writing two chapters she would mail it to her son in France because she didn't know if she could survive reliving the holocaust.
At the age of 14 she was awarded with a medal and became an officer for her cadet services on the Russian seaboard.
By the time she turned 15 she was a smuggler and leader of an orphanage that nobody had wanted, she said to an audience of about 25 people in the San Jose State University Hoover Hall lounge on April 18.
Alicia Appleman-Jurman, a holocaust survivor and award-winning author of the memoir, "Alicia - My Story," came to SJSU last week during Holocaust Genocide Week to commemorate the past and share her personal experiences during World War II.
Appleman-Jurman participated in multiple events last week including a discussion about Holocaust denial, said Ruth Geffner, staff member of Hillel of Silicon Valley, which partnered with the SJSU Jewish Student Union for last week's genocide memorial.
When Appleman-Jurman spoke about her story in Hoover Hall, she had technological support with various equipments including a microphone that helped her interact with the audience.
"Come to the movie," said Elliot Fine, a sophomore majoring in international business, who called his acquaintances on a cell-phone before the presentation got underway.
A video presentation was shown of a speech that Appleman-Jurman gave in 1993, which she said was to an audience of 4,500 people at Ricks College in Idaho - today known as Brigham Young University-Idaho.
Appleman-Jurman said that her 1993 speech still gets shown at colleges all over the United States and Canada, and that she still has phone conversations with students who saw the video.
She got married at the age of 20, Appleman-Jurman said, which led her to go to Holland with her American husband where she began to write her story.
From 1982 to 1985, she said, "I wasn't cooking … I just wrote," - and every time she finished writing two chapters she would mail it to her son in France because she didn't know if she could survive reliving the holocaust.
Be the first to comment on this story