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Born in the resort town of Truskawiec, Poland, Alicia Melamed was just 13 when the Nazis arrived in the district. The Melameds moved to nearby Drohobycz, hoping for safety in this large town, but the treatment of Jews there was particularly vicious: within weeks her brother was taken away to a concentration camp.

Survival in Nazi-controlled Drohobycz required extraordinary resourcefulness and luck. For a while, the family survived by working for a German who ran a small camp where rags and iron were sorted and recycled. Then, in July 1943, they were arrested, sent to the local prison and a few days later taken away to be shot. Alicia was the sole survivor from her family – the son of a tailor working for the Gestapo was able to have her freed, and she became part of this 'privileged family', all of whom survived the Nazi regime.

In 1945, a three-week journey by cattle truck brought Alicia Melamed to Walbrzych in Poland, where she met her future husband, marrying him in Warsaw in 1946.

The couple arrived in London in 1950, and ten years later Alicia Melamed Adams enrolled at St Martin's School of Art. The London of the 1960s, with its miniskirts, parties and general exuberance, seemed bizarre to her. The young woman with a dark past began to paint.