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

Mark Kurzem

Hardcover | Pages: 418 pages

Rating: 4.02 | 2622 Users | 257 Reviews

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Original Title:	The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood
ISBN:	0670018260 (ISBN13: 9780670018260)
Edition Language:	English

Chronicle As Books The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood

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.

List Containing Books The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood

Title	:	The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood
Author	:	Mark Kurzem
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 418 pages
Published	:	November 1st 2007 by Viking Adult (first published February 2000)
Categories	:	Nonfiction. History. World War II. Holocaust. Biography. Autobiography. Memoir. War

Rating Containing Books The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood

Ratings: 4.02 From 2622 Users | 257 Reviews

Column Containing Books The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood

I was very intrigued by this story and I feel as though I would have really enjoyed it overall with the way the father speaks. That being said, the father's story is wonderfully told and I enjoyed his side of things, what I could not get through was the son's narrative. It took nearly forty pages of the son to get to the father. These stories must be told but by the people who experienced it. It would have been wonderful just to have the son relay the story, not his interjections and questions

Wow, just wow. I don't know how to describe this book. It is in some ways like a detective story or putting together a jig saw puzzle. You read it and you wonder how the pieces will fit together. I've been in two death camps -- Auschwitz (5 times) and Majdanek (twice). The first time I travelled to Auschwitz in 1991 I went with a Polish Army Colonel whose uncle was killed there. I've read several books about the 'Shoah including "Night" and "the Diary of Anne Frank." I've pored over David

As a parent of a one-year old baby girl, one of the most difficult things for me to read about and yet find so intriguing is the subject of children in times of war. Perhaps it is the stark contrast between childhood innocence (and helplessness) and the animal-like cruelty that Man is capable of inflicting to himself.Children and war. It is a pain that strikes me in deep the heart, the same way I feel when I read about babies abandoned at birth or children neglected and abused. War is that great

An interesting underlying story, but the author's style drove me nuts and made the whole thing sound implausible.

Think back to all the memories you have from when you were 5 years old. What can you learn and trust from memories you have at such a young age? This book is about a man who has been hiding the secret of who he was for such a long time that he can hardly remember what the truth is. He asks his son to help him find out who he is and who his family is. This book is the result.

The whole idea of this book was intriguing, but I didn't feel like it was very well written. An interesting, but rather odd book. When I finished it, I had a lot of ambiguous feelings toward the people portrayed. Since it is about real people, maybe that was the way I was supposed to feel.

This is an amazing story about a 5 year old Jewish boy surviving a masacre in his village only to roam the Belarus mountains during late autum/early winter. He is eventually "found" by a woodsman who takes him to a soldier's camp to be killed. Because the boy can think on his feet, he makes a connection with Sergent Kulis who saves him from the firing squad. Jekab Kulis is a Latvian sergent on a mission to "liquidate" the ghettos in 1941. The sergent, knowing that the boy is Jewish, saves him.