The Youngest Corporal In The Nazi Army

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

(CBS)  His son Mark made a documentary of the quest for his father's history. They searched for months in dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases until a historian finally discovered that Koidanov had been the previous name of a town in Belarus, outside Minsk.

With that breakthrough, he then found a half-brother he didn't know existed; and when he returned to Koidanov, he found his old house which was still standing; and an apple tree he used to climb.

Kurzem said he couldn't believe it. And then he found out his real name: Elia Solomonovich Kalperin.

His half brother gave him a picture of their father, who had died 20 years earlier. The similarity to Alex is striking. Alex thought his father had been killed during the war, but he'd really been taken to a concentration camp and survived.

When his father returned to his village he heard that his wife and all his children - including Alex - had been killed. So father and son had each thought the other was dead.

"I would have liked to meet him, you know, after he came back from the concentration camps. And tell him that he had a son who survived the war. But it didn’t turn out that way," Kurzem said.

In Koidanov, Alex fulfilled his other life-long wish: he placed flowers at his mother's grave, on a memorial to the 1,600 Jews killed there by the Nazis in 1941.

"It was my family. Everybody. All my relatives. Which are quite a large number, I suppose, you know. Everybody," he said.

Alex took Simon up the hill where he'd hidden behind trees that are gone now. As he'd watched his mother and hundreds of others being killed below, he told us he bit his hand to keep from screaming, and that he passed out several times.

"From the sights and from the screams and from the pain in me," he explained. "The shooting went all day. All day. And I knew that I couldn't do anything about it. But it wasn't very nice to watch, either, you know. So I had to glimpse and then I turned my head and cried."

He used to feel guilty that he survived, but now he feels relieved that he's able to tell his story. The Jewish Claims Conference has verified it and his son wrote a book about it. Still, the past is not a happy place for Alex, but he went there, and came back having found his name, his village and his mother's grave.

But he never found out his real birth date. "I've never found out but every morning I get up I wish myself a happy birthday. And one day I'll strike it lucky."

"I hope you get a gift every day," Simon said.

"Not a gift," Kurzem replied. "A gift that I can see the sun."

[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