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Article: Siberian labor camp survivor turns entrepreneur.(20 Years that Changed Los Angeles: 20 Extraordinary Lives)(Jewish Polish immigrant Alicia Kaye)
- Article from:
- Los Angeles Business Journal
- Article date:
- July 19, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 CBJ, L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Alicia Kaye picked the wrong time and place to be born.
She came into the world in a Siberian labor camp in 1941, outside the town of Ossino. Her father and mother, both Poles and Jewish. were shipped to the camp when Russia and Nazi Germany sliced up their country in 1939. Polish Jews who were in the Nazi sector went to death camps like Auschwitz, while Jews who came under the rule of Stalin were sent to forced-labor camps in the Siberian wilderness.
Either way, they faced death.
"I remember how desolate it was," Kaye recalls. "We lived in barracks on cots. My father had a facility with languages and he learned Russian. I recall playing in the ...