The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Kurzem
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 48846
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.5
ISBN: 0670018260
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5318092
EAN: 9780670018260
ASIN: 0670018260
Publication Date: November 1, 2007
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Product Description
One mans 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 discoveredas either a Jew or a NaziAlex 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
One of the most riveting accounts of World War II I have ever read July 21, 2008
In the United States most of the time when one reads World War II history it tends to focus on the Normandy Landings and lightning dash to Berlin the Pacific theater is generally ignored and so is the Italian campaign. The Soviets also had to do a large amount of the fighting they were both defenders of their homeland and agents of a tyrannical regime.
Then there were those people who were caught in the middle of it all like one Jewish Latvian survivor who was only 5 years old. Plucked from a firing line by a sympathetic sergeant and warned never to be seen naked this little boy resolves to survive in any way he can. He survived the war and had a family but he was racked by guilt at the manner in which he was saved for many years.
While there are some funny accounts over the course of the novel it is by no means meant to be humorous the two stories that stick with me the most is the account of the time Alex Kurzem (the mascot) went to the train station and was assigned to pass out chocolates to an unruly crowd to claim them; later he reasoned that all or most of those people were killed in an extermination camp. Then there was the time that the soliders he was traveling with used him as bait to attract village women with unpleasant results for the little mascot and the women.
One also admire the author Mark Kurzem who tracked down all of these loose ends partially out of a sense of curiosity and to give his family a sense of closure about the whole issue. It is a truly remarkable effort especially when you consider the unlikelihood that there would be enough people alive to put the sometimes spotty recollections of the father into any context.
Overall-A truly remarkable account and evidence of tremendous courage on the part of the father both as a child to survive all of that and to level with his family years later about what he had gone through.
 Remarkable story of Holocaust survival May 26, 2008
Every story of survival from the Holocaust is incredibly unique and Mark Kurzem's The Mascot is no exception. I must say that once the author's father, Alex Kurzem, begins to unlock the memories--after over 60 years of silence--of escape from near certain death, his nurturing by would-be executioners, and ultimate search for his true identity, the book is nearly impossible to put down. The basic reservation I had about the book--which is presented in narrative form--is that whenever the story drifts away from its riveting father/son dialogue, the telling become a bit wordy and almost extraneously repetitive. I found myself doing a lot of skimming so as to get back to the meat of the story--the father's cathartic-like revelations. But, that said, the book is very worthwhile reading.
Author doesn't care about his Latvian history! Strange, in a scholar, such indifference... March 18, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Our author, Mr. Kurzem, Australian-born, of Latvian Jewish descent, finds out in his late adolescent that his father has been hiding his true childhood story for over 50 years. The son had been raised to consider himself a Latvian, as were others who emigrated to Australia via the German DP camps at the end of WWII. His father had been a reluctant Latvian, who married an Irish Catholic woman, but still, our author did consider himself to be Latvian until he got a call from his father. He was doing research at Oxford, so he was no slouch academically.
AS this very absorbing book progresses, we learn through the son that the father is himself unsure of who he really was, as he stumbled through the Latvian forest until adopted as a "mascot" (age 6) with a Latvian troop. He quickly learned Latvian, and later GErman, as these troops were working with the Nazis in expunging Soviet Communists, i.e. Partisans, from their country, after Germany came to liberate them from the Soviets. The remarkable story unfolds slowly, but with a wonderfully satisfying ending, as the son and his father go back to Latvia in post-Soviet 1990's, to see if the few clues can lead to his village.
Sure enough, through hard pushing and some sheer amazing lucky coincidences, they finally determine that the father is a shtetl Jew, who was spared death in a mass shooting by escaping in the night into a forest behind the village. The photographs in the book are very interesting, showing the details of clothing, houses, people's faces in those terrible times.
The final chapter condemns the Latvians for cooperating with the Germans, which is a slap in the face to anyone who knows the Latvians' miserable history. When they lost their independence to the Soviets, had their farms collectivized, their property stolen, their families shipped to Siberia and so on, most Latvians knew who controlled the Kremlin: the Jews, a fact none can deny. They appointed their own brethren in Riga to bring Communism with an iron fist, forming councils to destroy everyday Latvians' lives. When German soldiers arrived to destroy Communist control, there was no Latvian hesitation in wreaking revenge on the perpetrators, including the women and children. Jews became Partisans, running through the forest to escape arrest, often fleeing to Communist Russia. Many were innocent of any political involvement, as is true in any country.
However, our author, an educated man, omits this critical part of Latvian history, wipes them all with one "brown" brush, yet the Latvians did exactly that: call all Jews "reds", regardless of their true allegiances. Many were true Latvian nationalists and complete capitalists, who would never tamper with the rights to property against anyone. Too bad for these, it seemed; the devastation was too great.
I highly recommend this book for serving up a very exciting page-turner, as one wishes to see exactly how this young boy survived such a strange experience. You can understand how he waited until very late in life to reveal his story to anyone, including his children, because he could be persecuted by both Latvians and Jews, and above all, those millions who suffered at the hands of Communists. Their descendants are still angry!
Poor man! What a terrible time and place he was born into! But he was lucky to get down to Dresden, survived its bombing, get into a DP camp, and achieve an emigration visa to Australia. Imagine if he, like so many of the troop he'd joined, had been stuck back in the Communist land! His son would never have been born, for he would have been shot by Commies.
The son shows bitterness, but the father knows himself to be VERY LUCKY!!!
Could not put it down March 5, 2008
I could not put the book down. It's amazing what a 5-6 y. old can remember after hiding it away and not talking to anyone about his past for 50 years. Written very well, thought provoking, and makes you wonder how one should define a "Holocaust Survivor."
Truly incredible Holocaust story on several levels February 2, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
After reading a highly favorable review in the New York Times, I rushed down to the bookstore where a friend works to see if they had this book, and was shocked to find that they did not have it and that no one had been asking about it.
It's such an amazing story--a young boy escapes death in just the first of an unusual set of circumstances and developments, twists and turns, leading to events that cripple him later as a husband and father until he feels compelled to reveal his story to his son, the author of this book.
I have read a number of "survival" books about the Holocaust. Surely this is the most unusual. It reminded me in some ways of Martin Gilbert's THE BOYS, but this is a completely different story. This is a Jewish boy who was adopted by Latvian troops collaborating with the Nazis, and as an adult, he has clearly suffered from guilt and confusion such that the reader experiences the journey as well. As I read on, I found myself wondering if the truth would turn out to be different from what the boy's memories were, just as the author clearly did as he listened to his father's story, a tale slowly revealed over the course of a few years in the late '90s, almost fifty years after the original events in Russia and Latvia in 1941-45.
And there are several levels on which this story works. In the WWII period, you get a feeling for village, or shtetl, life in Russia through the initial memories of the boy as well as later when he and his son do further investigations. You get what seems to be a likely accurate picture of the soldiers, higher officials, and collaborating civilians the boy came to know. There are vivid depictions of the later war years.
Later on, after the author begins to find out the fuller story, father and son confront mixed reactions from scholars and Jewish organizations as well as the Latvian community in Australia, where the author grew up not knowing he was Jewish until his father felt compelled to find out who he really was and where he came from.
I really liked the way the book was organized, mostly short chapters, and here, the author or his editors really did well in observing that sometimes "less is more". Thus, there is not an extensive discussion of some minor characters, colleagues, friends, and others whom the author consults and confronts as the story of his father unfolds, yet we understand pretty well where these characters are coming from.
Finally, I commend the book for its helpful index, maps, and of course the fascinating photos that are reproduced showing the young "Alex" in his SS uniform. It's a little puzzling that the modern photos are rendered in the same grainy way as the old ones, but that is a minor complaint.
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