Alicia Jurman is a study in the strength of the human spirit, creative problem-solving, and sustaining one's life by ingenuity and determination. The daughter of a factory owner, Alicia spent her early childhood in a stable Jewish family of six, until the German invasion and occupation of Poland and her small town of Buczacz. Forced into a ghetto, the life Alicia had known was systematically destroyed, with the murder of her father and ultimately, all three brothers. She and her mother were able to avoid the German "Judenrein actions" by hiding in underground bunkers and fleeing their town to hide in forests and ravines. On a number of occasions, Alicia was actually caught but managed to escape into an amazing journey around the villages and farms of Poland, disguising herself as a Pole or Ukrainian when necessary, in order to work in farmers' fields for a daily ration of bread and sour milk, which she shared with her mother, who often hid in the wheat fields during the day. At one point, they were taken in by a hermit, who eventually housed a number of Jews in his tiny hut. With the Russian invasion, Buczacz was liberated, and the two returned to their home town. When the Germans occupied Buczacz again, however, her mother was killed, and Alicia, escaping a firing squad, was on the run again.

As the Russians attempted to occupy Poland again, Alicia endeared herself to a troop of soldiers by freeing them from a makeshift German prison and was given papers attesting to her heroism. These documents allowed her to travel more freely about Poland and to engage in endeavors to improve her existence as well as those of other Jewish survivors. At one point, she opened and ran an orphanage, creating a small haven for surviving Jewish children. Faced with Russian anti-Semitism and resulting pogroms, Alicia then became involved in an organization that was illegally transporting Jews to Israel. By this point, she was only 14 years old, and the war had ended. Contracting a serious illness, she landed in a displaced persons' camp in Austria and from there, made her way to Marseilles, where she boarded a ship bound for Israel. Caught by the British, she spent 8 months on the island of Cyprus before the British allowed her entry. There, she met and married her American husband and eventually emigrated to America. Alicia's story is an amazing tale of survival, and it reads like a suspense-filled page turner, as this young girl outwits the Germans, Polish collaborators, Ukrainians, and Russians, emerging in triumph.