Alex Kurzem

Alex Kurzem (believed to have been born Ilya Galperin in Belarus, either in 1935 or 1936) is a retired Australian television repairman, whose experiences in World War II have been the subject of a book and film. On May 19, 2011 Melbourne reporter, Keith Moor published an article that questions the veracity of Kurzem's story and reports of simultaneous investigations by the German and U.S. governments as well as the Jewish Claims Conference into Mr. Kurzem's claims of actually being Jewish and a victim of Nazi persecution. On September 21, 2012, Dan Goldman a reporter for Israel's oldest daily newspaper, Haaretz published an article about the investigation into Kurzem's story. Kurzem was quoted as saying he now "never said" he was Ilya Galperin. Despite previously asking for $100,000(AUD) to take a DNA test, Goldberg reports that Kurzem will take the test.

Biography

Kurzem's parents (Believed to be Solomon Galperin and Chana Gildenberg) were Jewish and on October 21, 1941, his mother and younger brother and sister were exterminated along with approximately 1,600 other Russian Jews in Koidanov (now Dzyarzhynsk, Belarus). After weeks or months of living in the forests and begging for food (the precise date of his rescue is unknown), he was saved from probable death by Latvian Sergeant Jekabs Kulis. While the family was lined up for execution, Kulis took an interest in him and adopted him as the battalion's mascot, having secretly warned him never to reveal his Jewish identity. Latvian and German soldiers knew him as a Russian orphan who had lost his parents in the forest.

Throughout his childhood, Kurzem appeared in Nazi propaganda media as an Aryan mascot, including at least one newsreel. On one occasion Kurzem remembered being ordered by his commanding officer, Karlis Lobe, to hand out chocolates to other Jews to calm them as they boarded trucks that took them to be exterminated. In 1972 Kurzem provided an affidavit in support of Lobe who was on trial for war crimes. Currently Kurzem receives reparations from the Jewish Claims Conference as a victim of Nazi persecution.

In 1944, with the Nazis facing almost certain defeat, the commander of the Latvian SS unit sent Kurzem to live with a Latvian family.

Kurzem immigrated to Australia from a Displaced Person's camp in Hamburg, Germany, in 1949. He worked in a circus and eventually became a television repair man in Melbourne. He had three children with wife Patricia (died 2003). All the time, he kept his past life to himself, not even telling his wife or children. It was not until 1997 that he finally told his family, and along with his son, Mark, set about discovering more about his past life.

Unbeknownst to Kurzem, his probable father, Solomon Galperin, had joined a group of Russian partisans; he was later caught and sent to Auschwitz. Galperin returned to Dzyarzhynsk after the war, remarried, and died in 1975 without ever knowing, according to Kurzem, that his eldest son had survived.

In 2002, Kurzem's son Mark (died November 2009 of complications following diabetes) wrote and produced a documentary (with Lina Caneva) entitled The Mascot, which detailed his father's childhood among the Latvian Nazi SS. Mark later wrote a book, also called The Mascot (2007), which tells the same story, although it conflicts in many details with the earlier documentary.

See also

Solomon Perel

References

• Mark Kurzem & Lina Caneva, The Mascot (Australian documentary for ABC television, 2002)
• Mark Kurzem, The Mascot (2007)

External links

• [1], Melbourne Herald Sun
• The Mascot, TheAge.com
• The secret history of the Nazi mascot, BBC
• The Nazis' Little Mascot
• 'Nazi mascot' ends almost 60 years of silence
• 'The Youngest Corporal In The Nazi Army, 60 Minutes