The Youngest Corporal In The Nazi Army
How A Young Jewish Boy Escaped Death And Became A Mascot For Nazi Soldiers
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Play CBS Video Video Secrets Of A Nazi Mascot In 1941, Alex Kurzem fled alone into the forest, leaving his murdered family behind. As Bob Simon reports, Kurzem was later captured by SS soldiers and, unaware of his Jewish heritage, made him their mascot.
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Video Eyewitness To Genocide "Only On The Web:" Alex Kurzem, who at age 6 escaped death and became a mascot for Nazi soldiers, remembers some of the atrocities he witnessed.
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Video Exclusive: Mistaken Identity At first, the Jewish Claims Conference refused to certify Alex Kurzem as a victim of the Holocaust. He explains what changed their minds.
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Interactive Lessons Of Auschwitz A look back at the notorious Nazi death camp where some 1.5 million people perished.
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Interactive World War II Remembering the more than 50 million lives lost.
"The man said to me, 'Ah, you're a Jew. You shouldn't be alive. You should be dead with the others. I'll take you to be shot,'" Kurzem remembered. "He took me, dragged me to this school yard where they were lining up people and shooting them …And the soldier who was nearby me, I said to him, 'Please before you kill me, would you give me a bit of bread?' All I was thinking, 'I'm hungry. Wish I could get a bit of bread before I die.'"
"That soldier who gave you bread, he then took you around into the schoolhouse and he said he wanted to see if you're Jewish. So he made you lower your pants, and he saw you were Jewish," Simon remarked.
"Jew. And he said, 'No good. No good, No good.' That's all he kept saying. 'No good. No good. No good,'" Kurzem remembered.
"I understand he put a pistol to his own head to show what was gonna happen to you," Simon said.
"If they found out you're Jewish," Kurzem explained.
But then, he says, that soldier took pity on the little boy. He not only gave Alex bread, he gave him his life. "He said, 'What I'll do, I'll tell the other soldiers that you're a Russian orphan. The soldiers gave me a new name and a new birthday. And so that's how I became the mascot, a good luck charm, for this particular division."
Once the soldier convinced his unit to make Alex a Nazi, he got his own tailor-made SS uniforms; his own miniature gun; and his own rank: corporal - the youngest corporal in the Nazi army. Then, all decked out, this little Jewish boy marched off with his Nazi division as they went off to kill Jews.
"I sometimes come into a village where we'd been patrolling. And you see people being lined up to be shot in groups. Then you come to another place and you see 20 or 30 people lined up to be hanged," Kurzem remembered.
Asked if watching the shootings brought back memories of his mother, Kurzem told Simon, "Yes. I turned my head away many times because I thought, 'Well you could have been one of them and that's what happened in the place you lived in. All your family.'"
Later in the war, when the Russians counterattacked and the fighting became too intense for him to stay with the soldiers, the Nazis gave Alex a new family, placing him with a prominent Nazi family in Riga, Latvia.
Produced by Robert Anderson
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- This sounds strikingly similar to what happened to Solmon Perel and what was made into the move "Europa Europa" .
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- I read this earlier and was horrified, do you know that this Sholom guy is trying to get the case moved or dropped completely? He states racism towards jews in Iowa as the reason. *** ARE YOU SERIOUS?
So let me get this straight, because you are a Jew in the US, you can play the holocaust card and just get a slap on the wrist?
Posted by anti-zion
Yeah and every photo but one I've seen of this idiot shows him with this all knowing self rightious smirk on his face- the one showing him handcuffed in the cop's car was absent his sickening smirk.
He had that smirk in a photo with the quote about how he had NO idea those 300 or 400 employees he had there were all illegals, and had NO idea they hired children illegally either.
He's an immigrant Russian piece of trash who came HERE to the USA with the other guy and opened this Sobibor style concentration camp for animals, where they all go in and NONE come out alive, again you'd think those 2 jews would distance themselves totally from such a thing, but not these 2! - Reply to this comment
- I saw the interview and it exaggerated some of the claims in the book for I have read it. There was nothing "NAZI" about the soldiers who captured him. They were the 18th Kurzemes police Battalion drafted by the Germans to hunt partisans in that area and Alex did not live alone but with the partisans who also happened to be Jewish. Under Geneva rules armed partisans do not have the rights that soldiers have. The Russians in a 1960's show trial convicted several of the 18th Kurzemes soldier for the Solin massacre even though the unit was 130km away from that town that day.The only partisan chasing unit near the town was a Lithuanian one.
If anyone wants to get deeper there was a thread at
http://latviansonline.com/forum/viewthread/32934/ about the book - Reply to this comment
- "It is nice to be continually reminded of the atrocities of Hitler, a crazy man.
But then wonder why the Jews did not learn the lesson of . "
Oh yes, and don't forget the BIG news case of the arrest of two jews in the midwest who till the INS and feds raided- operated a "kosher" animal concentration camp where animals were routinely brutalized in violation of all ethics rules and guidelines for kosher meat, and as if that wasn't enough they knowingly employed HUNDREDS of illegals, as well as children under age and then paid them slave wages to work in this FILTHY plant that also failed tests for salmonella.
They are now facing criminal charges but Mr Rubashkin- one of the owners was quoted in the media as comparing his treatment by the law like Polish nazis did the jews! a fine one to talk given the animal concentration camp conditions HE subjected hundreds of thousands of animals!
Oct 30, 2008 ... First on the Iowa Independent: Federal prosecutors have arrested Sholom Rubashkin, former chief executive officer and vice president at Agriprocessors
Jun 3, 2008 ... Rubashkin Scandals Agriprocessors, the Rubashkin family's Postville, Iowa slaughterhouse,was found to be in violation of Humane Slaughter .
Rubashkin Failed 3 USDA Salmonella Testings ...
According to a report released by Food and Water Watch, Agriprocessors, Inc. the Postville, Iowa, producers of Aaron's Best, Rubashkin, and other kosher ...
Sholom Rubashkin, who was arrested on October 30, 2008 for harboring illegal aliens.[4] The firm filed for bankruptcy on November 5, 2008 following a series of alleged violations of labor law and repeated accusations of mistreatment of cattle.
In October 2008, the Iowa Labor Commission fined Agriprocessors $9.99 million for various violations of state labor law, including illegally deducting money from employees for safety equipment and failing to pay employees.
August 31, 2006. Agriprocessors paid a $600,000 fine for violating waste-water regulations
On September 9, 2008, Agriprocessors, its owner and three of its current or past managers were each charged with more than 9,000 violations of child labor laws.
January 2009, an additional 99 federal charges were filed against former CEO Sholom Rubashkin and three former managers for money laundering, making false statements, failing to make required payments for livestock, and 25 additional bank-fraud charges - Reply to this comment
- Alex survived Nazi attack on his village. Israel should a lesson. The murder of innocent Children are war crimes.
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- anti-zion You obviously didn't read the article! Or waht part of being passed off as a Russian orphan did you not catch? Many people don't circumsize their kids esspecially in pour nations. And if you were any kind of student of history you'd know that Eastern Europe at the times we're discussing here were extremly pour. Here's an idea foryou take a nice long trip through the Appalatian communities in the US and the destitution you see there is not even close to some of Eastern Europe even today.
As to claiming that the story is a fake is like that Bishop that just got kicked out of South America for denigning the Holocast's gas chambers. He should be put in chains and let around to see all the documentation films the Army made us watch about finding the death camps, the crematoriums and emaciated human beings. We were even given guided tours of the camps, As he should be still wearing the chains. Unfortunately the stentch of burned flesh is long since disappeared.
The only hope for you though is a rigorous education the maybe you'll learn some humillity - Reply to this comment
- The nazis got their ideas from America. ,
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- I can?t figure out who wrote this
?Story? Jack London or Edgar Rice Burroughs,
A 6 year old boy Tarzan with a selective memory (I am 78 and can remember my kindergarten teacher and every one in my class) running around in the dead of winter dragging a coat to heavy to carry and sleeping in trees?
No wonder holocaust deniers are growing by the 10?s of thousands!
Gaby888 - Reply to this comment
- I can?t figure out who wrote this
?Story? Jack London or Edgar Rice Burroughs,
A 6 year old boy Tarzan with a selective memory (I am 78 and can remember my kindergarten teacher and every one in my class) running around in the dead of winter dragging a coat to heavy to carry and sleeping in trees?
No wonder holocaust deniers are growing by the 10?s of thousands!
Gaby888 - Reply to this comment

