Ingenuity

Everyone knows individuals whose ingenuity has allowed them to navigate through problems and situations by thinking "outside the box," engaging in truly creative problem-solving. Indeed, many of the best criminals in history have shown this character trait to extreme. Alicia Jurman personified ingenuity at its height, however, as she devised methods of survival in perhaps the most dangerous situation a human could face. While many Jews around her resigned themselves to their fates and ultimate death, this protagonist was determined to survive at all costs. She knew she would have to become as creative as possible, using her wits and devising the most ingenious solutions to all of the dangerous situations into which her ethnicity had thrown her. She made use of her mastery of languages to blend in with both Poles and Ukrainians, adopting dialects dependent upon the farm on which she worked. She stalked through the...