Alex Kurzem
Alex Kurzem (believed to have been born Ilya Galperin in Belarus, either in 1935 or 1936) is a retired Australian television repairman. He had three children with wife Patricia (died 2003), and immigrated to the country from Latvia, in 1949.
History
Kurzem alleges his parents were Jewish and claims on October 21, 1941, his mother and siblings 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 claims to have been saved from certain death by Latvian Sergeant Jekabs Kulis. While being lined up for execution, Kurzem claims 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, and even when he grew up, Kurzem never told his wife or sons that he was Jewish.
Throughout his childhood, Kurzem appeared in Nazi propaganda media as an Aryan mascot, including at least one newsreel. On one occasion he Kurzem claims to have been 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. 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 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.
The documentary and book fail to provide any concrete facts that can be substantiated. Those who Kurzem claims to have knowledge of the facts are all deceased.
See also
References
- Mark Kurzem & Lina Caneva, The Mascot (Australian documentary for ABC television, 2002)
- Mark Kurzem, The Mascot (2007)