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Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood
Viking
November 2007
On Sale: November 1, 2007
416 pages
ISBN: 0670018260
EAN: 9780670018260
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
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.
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