The Mascot Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood

by Kurzem, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780670018260
• ISBN10: 0670018260
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-11-01
• Publisher: Viking Adult

Summary

One man’s struggle with memory and prejudice on the way to recovering his past Mark Kurzem was happily ensconced in his academic life at Oxford when his father, Alex, showed up on his doorstep with a terrible secret to tell. When a Nazi death squad raided his village at the outset of World War II, Jewish five-year-old Alex Kurzem escaped. After surviving the Russian winter by foraging for food and stealing clothes off dead soldiers, he was discovered by a Nazi-led Latvian police brigade that later became an SS unit. Not knowing he was Jewish, they made him their mascot, dressing the little corporal” in uniform and toting him from massacre to massacre. Terrified, the resourceful Alex charmed the highest echelons of the Latvian Third Reich, eventually starring in a Nazi propaganda film. When the war ended he was sent to Australia with a family of Latvian refugees. Fearful of being discovered—as either a Jew or a Nazi—Alex kept the secret of his childhood, even from his loving wife and children. But he grew increasingly tormented and became determined to uncover his Jewish roots and the story of his past. Shunned by a local Holocaust organization, he reached out to his son Mark for help in reclaiming his identity. A survival story, a grim fairy-tale, and a psychological drama, this remarkable memoir asks provocative questions about identity, complicity, and forgiveness.

Author Biography

Mark Kurzem studied at Melbourne, Tokyo, and Oxford universities. He served as international relations adviser to the mayor of Osaka in Japan. This is his first book.

Table of Contents

Author's Note	p. IX
This is All That I Know	p. 3
The Hemorrhage	p. 16
Earth Tremors	p. 30
Interrogated	p. 49
The Seduction	p. 71
The Dzenis Family	p. 87
The Volhov Swamps	p. 101
The Chocolate Soldier	p. 118
Judgment	p. 137
The Ground Shifts	p. 145
Cast Adrift	p. 152
Oxford	p. 164
Elli	p. 180
Home, Again	p. 187
Escape from Riga	p. 191
To Freedom	p. 204
The Affidavit	p. 213
No Escape	p. 229
Stockholm	p. 236
Fear	p. 241
Alice	p. 251
The Letter	p. 258
Nightmares	p. 271
A Telegram	p. 283
Oxford	p. 297
Koidanov	p. 314
Connections	p. 330
Solomon and Volodya	p. 342
Riga	p. 357
Carnikava	p. 363
The Film	p. 377
Epilogue	p. 387
Acknowledgments	p. 397
Index	p. 401
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