Alex Kurzem

Alex Kurzem, born 1935 or 1936, is the former boy Mascot of a Latvian police battalion who subsequently emigrated to Australia. He states that he is Jewish and survived when his family was massacred. He has been the subject of a TV documentary and a book, both entitled 'The Mascot'written by his late son, Mark. However the authenticity of his account has been challenged.

Biography

Kurzem calims his parents were Solomon Galperin and Chana Gildenberg, who were Jewish. On October 21, 1941, Gildenberg and her son and daughter were exterminated along with approximately 1,600 other Russian Jews in Koidanov (now Dzyarzhynsk, Belarus). Kurzem says that he escaped and that after months of living in the forests and begging for food (he does not give a precise date of rescue) he was saved from probable death by Jekabs Kulis the Sergeant of a Latvian police battalion, who adopted him as the battalion's mascot, and who 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. Kurzem says that one occasion his commanding officer, Karlis Lobe, ordered him to hand out chocolates to other Jews to calm them as they boarded trucks that took them to be exterminated. In 1944, with the Nazis facing almost certain defeat, the commander of the Latvian SS unit sent Kurzem to live with a Latvian family.

Solomon Galperin escaped extermination and joined a group of Russian partisans. He was later caught and sent to Auschwitz returning to Dzyarzhynsk after the war. He remarried, and died in 1975 without ever knowing that Kurzem had survived.

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.

In 2002, Kurzem's son Mark (died 2009) wrote and produced a documentary (with Lina Caneva) entitled The Mascot, which tells his father's story of his childhood among the Latvian Nazi SS. Mark subsequently wrote a book, The Mascot, Unravelling the Mystery of my Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood, which tells the same story. It was reported his story has inspired a full-length Hollywood feature film.

Kurzem receives reparations from the Jewish Claims Conference as a victim of Nazi persecution.

Questions

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 daily newspaper, Haaretz published an article about the investigation into Kurzem's story. Kurzem was quoted in the article that he "never said" he was Ilya Galperin. Despite previously asking for $100,000 to take a DNA test as reported by Keith Moor in 2011, Goldberg reports that Kurzem will take the test.

See also

Solomon Perel

References

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

External links

• 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