Just saw a document a couple of weeks ago of a man in Australia, who was born in Bielorussia and was jewish, and during the war as a little boy was saved by luck but then again was a mascot for SS forces... ---------- The Mascot By Clare Kermond April 8, 2004 As a boy growing up in Melbourne, Mark Kurzem loved his father's stories. Alex Kurzem told wonderful, lyrical tales, stories about the time he joined the circus and became the elephant boy, stories about the outback. But there was one story he never told. For more than 50 years, Alex Kurzem kept a terrible story inside him, a secret from even his own family. He had resolved to take this secret with him to his death. Speaking from his home in Oxford, England, Mark Kurzem, 40, says his father decided to speak out only after the 50th anniversary of the Second World War and having survived a frightening health scare. Mark Kurzem recalls visiting his father in Melbourne and watching programs about World War II survivors; his father turned to him, saying: "You know, Mark, I have a story, too." Alex Kurzem was born in a small village in Belarus, Eastern Europe, and as a boy he and his mother were rounded up by the Nazis for execution. The five-year-old escaped and for months lived by himself, sleeping rough in the woods and begging for food. He was caught again and taken to a school where children were being rounded up to be shot. One Nazi soldier took pity on the boy and, given that he didn't look Jewish, adopted him as a kind of mascot for the army unit. Towards the end of the war Alex was taken from the soldiers and sent to live with a wealthy Latvian family. He became a kind of poster boy for Aryan youth and was even used in a Nazi propaganda film. After the war, the Latvian family migrated to Australia and Alex grew up as a member of their tight-knit community. It took Mark and his father more than six years to piece together this story. All they had to go on was a couple of words his father remembered and a few images of his early childhood. The resulting documentary, The Mascot, written and and produced by Mark, is the story of their search to uncover Alex Kurzem's past. Mark Kurzem says many people they approached for help reacted with disbelief and even hostility. But with help from international Jewish research centres and some lucky coincidences, they began to make progress. Mark says that as the facts began to emerge to confirm his father's memories, he was happy for his father but also fearful that he might be disappointed, and of the memories that might be stirred up. "I was all the time worried about him, about what he might find out and how it would affect him. I was also worried in a much more abstract philosophical way about what he was hoping to find. A lot of people might be looking for a kind of redemption or consolation," he says. As a child, Mark knew his father had lived through the war but also understood that this was something they should not ask about; this part of his life was locked away as though in "a black box". But for a young boy growing up in the immigrant suburbs of Melbourne, his father's missing past was not unusual. "Most of my school friends were sons or daughters of immigrants; there was a kind of subtext that we all knew our parents had some strange events in their past," he says. Now that the black box has been opened and his father and the rest of the family know the awful details of his wartime childhood, Mark still struggles with the question of whether it is better to know. He says he has been deeply affected by learning about some of the horrors that his father witnessed as a small boy. "It's hard to describe. It profoundly affected me; it goes into your bones. You are the flesh and blood of your parents and somehow this is now part of who I am," he says. Alex Kurzem still lives in Melbourne where his two younger sons and their families also reside. In the documentary we see that the news about his past has met with mixed reactions from those in the Jewish and Latvian communities. He has lost friends since he began uncovering his past and still meets with scepticism and criticism from some people. Mark Kurzem says his father has been vilified by some sections of Melbourne's Jewish community and has been hurt by some people's reactions. Mark says many people want to act as "gatekeepers" about the history of the Jews' persecution during the war. Alex Kurzem understands that some people want him to be full of hate for the Nazis, even those who treated him with kindness as a boy, but he says he does not feel hate towards anybody. In the documentary he explains his feelings about discovering his past this way by saying: "There are two people inside me now and they are not getting along very well. "Who do you blame? Do you blame the whole world, blame Hitler - who do you blame for cruelty? I still don't know." http://www.abc.net.au/tv/guide/netw/200404/highlights/226006.htm http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2004/04/07/1081222527300.html
This is a strange and interesting story. On May 4 there is a program about him on dutch TV. Also I read an article in a dutch magazine last week about this.
I do suggest if anyone can see it to watch it. It is very interesting, as the man goes back to Bielorussia to see the surviving relatives, as well he finds through friends a footage of him being played as the Waffen-SS mascot ( ss clothes on ) which was truly "stunning". A very tragic story in itself....
I taped it because there were so many WWII programs yesterday. The reason for that was that it was Liberation day in Holland.
