The Youngest Corporal In The Nazi Army

How A Young Jewish Boy Escaped Death And Became A Mascot For Nazi Soldiers

(CBS)  During the summers when he was 7 and 8, Alex and his Latvian foster family spent their weekends at a beach near Riga. One weekend, the Germans made a propaganda film there starring Alex, the youngest corporal in the Nazi army - a role model for the master race. A role model who the Germans didn’t realize was Jewish.

"Did you feel funny because here were the Nazis making a film about you and you were Jewish and they didn’t know that?" Simon asked.

"Exactly," Kurzem replied. "All the time I felt that, you know, there's something wrong somewhere. How am I when I'm…in their hated race."

He lived in fear every day he said that the soldiers, and later his foster family, would discover he was Jewish.

"I had to be aware every moment. Doesn't matter where I was. Beach, bed, bedroom, bathroom. Every moment I had to think that 'I’m here under false pretenses. If I’m discovered, I'm gone,'" he explained.

He said living under false pretenses was "very, very stressful."

And he said he had no doubt he would've been shot had his secret been revealed.

After the war, he migrated to Australia, married and had his own family. But he still kept his secrets and didn't tell his wife or his children that he'd spent the war with the Nazis or that he was Jewish.

He kept those secrets for more than 50 years before he felt compelled to answer the questions that had haunted him since the war. "I thought before I die, I should know who I am. And also I always wished to go back to the village and put a flower on my mother's grave."

But this wouldn't be easy. Orphaned at age six, he remembered the trauma, but had long forgotten his true identity. He didn't know his name or his birth date; or the name of his village or where it might be. The only clue he had to anything was one word that had stuck in his mind for all those years: Koidanov.

But he had no idea what it meant. "I thought for a while that it could be my surname or something. But that's what I remembered. Koidanov," he said.

[proudmilvet]

Rush Limbaugh(Der Fuhrer)Dick Cheney(DR.Mengele)Ann Coulter(Eva Braun)Sean Hannity(Josef Goebbles,Minister of propaganda)Bill O'Reilly(Baron Von Stupid)GW Bush(Sgt.Shultz)Glenn Beck(One of the Katzenjammer kids)Newt Gingrich(Herr Goring)Karl Rove(Himmler)

[Im_N0t_0v3r]

This sounds strikingly similar to what happened to Solmon Perel and what was made into the move "Europa Europa" .

[Newster1]

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!

[courlander]

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

[Newster1]

"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

[sean1z]

Alex survived Nazi attack on his village. Israel should a lesson. The murder of innocent Children are war crimes.

[neznative]

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

[barbaram99]

The nazis got their ideas from America. ,

[gaby888]

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

[gaby888]

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