Below is the synopsis for an Australian documentary made last year. Does anyone have any info about the apparent 'mascot'. I have never heard of a similar story happening. Also, anyone have any idea what unit he may have been attached to. I have posted this to the SS/WSS forum as the film shous his uniform as having the black epaulettes of SS truppen. Any help would be appreciated
Cheers
Ben
THE MASCOT
The Mascot is the story of one man's struggle to discover his stolen identity.
From contemporary and historical perspectives, The Mascot traces the journey of Alex Kurzem, a long-term resident of Melbourne, Australia to reclaim his past in wartime Europe. Saved from the death pits by the very Nazi soldiers who killed his family, these soldiers transformed him into their five-year-old mascot.
Alex Kurzem lived in a village in rural Belarus (Eastern Europe) until he was five. In 1941 Nazi Extermination Troops arrived in his village, massacring all the Jews. Alex witnessed the murder of his whole family and the whole community. He managed to escape to the forest. After wandering alone for months surviving deprivations of hunger and listening to the sounds of predatory wolves, German soldiers found him. He faced execution. But in an astounding turn of events, one soldier saved his life. He was then cared for by the soldiers and adopted as their mascot or good luck charm!
Instructed never to reveal his Jewish identity and indoctrinated with a new past and name, he lived as a young German soldier. At the age of five, Alex was a child soldier complete with uniform and machine-gun. As a celebrated mascot of the frontline troops, he appeared in propaganda newsreels of the time.
Immediately after Hitler's defeat, he was sent to a transit camp and was nearly adopted by a once prominent Latvian couple. Alex buried this traumatic experience and made his way to Australia in 1949 to begin a new life. There began the slow but certain assimilation into a new land, from the Bonagilla Camp experience, the bleakness of the outback, even working as an elephant boy with Wurth's Circus and then finally to Melbourne.
For fifty years he lived a normal suburban life -work, family, horse racing and friends. As a "new Australian" he married and had three children. He worked as an electrician. But all this time Alex Kurzem lived with a secret he did not even reveal to his wife and children. Then in 1996 a series of remarkable events served as a catalyst to change his decision to take his story to his grave. All he had were two words -Koidanov and Panok. So started the quest to find their meaning and he hoped his true identity.
Alex's journey into his past is beset with official and personal obstacles. Four years later Alex found a name and a birthplace and even placed a flower on his mother's resting place! The Mascot is Alex's unique story!
"You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence."
Robert Frost
The story you are talking about is the new 2007 released book “the Mascot” by Mark Kurzem ISBN 978-0-670-01826-0 about a child found in Belarus in 1942 by the 18th Kurzemes Battalion from Riga Latvia while hunting partisans. The unbelievable part is that the child was about 5 and survived the 1941-1942 winter in the woods by himself. This is the winter where soldiers in winter clothing froze and the Baltic Sea froze over in the last 100 years. There is a report of a movie being made about this kid.
I’m sorry Santa wasted her money on this book but then I could only conjecture about the validity of the story.
I conclude that the story is plausible but not to be used as a historically correct document. The timeline cannot be verified for this is told by an old man trying to remember his activities from 5 years old on up. Also everything was only told to his son who I have a suspicion helped in the memories with such statements from page 80.
“What time of the year was it?”
“Not long after I was picked up by the soldiers,” my father replied. “They told me later that they had found me in late May 1942, so it must have been early June the same year.”
“That would have made it summertime.”
“Exactly, and that is where I am confused, because my impression is that it was cold, and that there was snow on the ground.”
“They might’ve lied about when they picked you up,” I suggested.
“But why would they?” my father said, genuinely mystified.
“Perhaps to hide their involvement in this massacre,” I mused. “If
only there was some way to find out more about the movement of Latvian troops.”
“Perhaps "Koidanov" or "Panok" is the key to where I was born. If that were the case, we could learn a lot about my movements and the soldiers as well.”
“What about this building?” I asked. “What was it?”
My father shrugged. “At that time I didn’t recognize the building as anything in particular. But I wonder now if it was a synagogue.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” I replied. From my limited knowledge of the Holocaust, I knew that it had been a commonplace occurrence. “The people were likely Jewish,” I added.
My father looked momentarily bewildered. “Sergeant Kulis used the word "partizani.’”
“The Nazis often used that term for the Jews they hunted in the forests. They also called them Bolsheviks.”
“I didn’t know,” my father said, visibly shocked. “To be honest, I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea who was Jewish and who wasn’t, even if they were my people. I was only five or six.” Then he added: “All I thought was that they looked like people from my village. Certainly now, looking back, I am sure that they were Jewish.”
Later at the end of the book it was verified by other Jewish survivors that they had joined the partisan movement so it was Jews and partisans and the Geneva rules for treating partisans are different then soldiers.
His survival in the woods before being given to the Latvians in my opinion was that he was with the partisans or found by a woman and her son and lived with them during this time. He calls the son an “ogre” smelly and dirty, so with having witnessed a massacre and maybe the son molested him, it was put out of his mind. If someone other then his son interviewed him at first, then the story might have been revealed. The son according to him gave him up to the Latvians while they were hunting partisans by saying “Another one for you! From the forest” .
The Latvians placed him in the schoolhouse where he found an “enormous” crate full of rifles. Since soldiers on patrol do not carry crates of rifles with them, it must have been a partisan cache the Latvians discovered. Beside the building were a row of dead men according to the child.
The only mention of SS is done by the son and only by the father after previous mentioning by the son.
The massacre he saw was at the village of Koidanov October 21, 1941 where his mother was killed, but later in the book we learn not his father. Also the massacre was committed by the Lithuanian Second Brigade which was operating in a number of villages southwest of Minsk.
The question of Slonim and if he witnessed it, the quotes are such.
“Had my father in fact been taken to Slonim, where he witnessed the massacre?
When I put the question to him, my father had prevaricated.
“It could’ve been another time and place.” “
To me the most perfect way to hide a Jew under the Nazi Regime is to dress him as a Nazi. Many times he states that the Latvians told him to not allow anyone to undress him for he might be hurt for he was circumcised. If he was found out then the Latvians hiding him also would be punished. His son turns things around (my opinion) and talks of making fun of him and degradation.
I think the media is pushing a poor Jewish boy being used by evil Latvian Nazi SS soldiers sent out to kill Jews and it will be advertised that way when the movie comes out.
Alex witnessed the murder of his whole family and the whole community. He managed to escape to the forest. After wandering alone for months surviving deprivations of hunger and listening to the sounds of predatory wolves,
I don't see how any reasonable person could believe that a helpless five year old child could survive alone during winter for "months" in Russia. That sounds absolutely silly to me.
Since this book is an accusation against Latvians, they did an investigation and if you can read the language there are a few pages online.
From one version comes:
"Daugava Vanagi" (Latvian Newspaper) 1942, 20 November, At the village after battling and killing the partisans they met two old women and a scared to death child dressed in rags. His version then was that his father was sent to Siberia and his mother remarried a Jew.
30 July 1943, it was written that his first words were "Stasis" and that his mother had sent him to a children's home in Minsk in 1941 and they rented him out to be a herdsman in Slonim.
And the book tells of him surviving in the woods, so what version will the movie be?
