The Jewish Nazi: Who is Alex Kurzem?
Alex Kurzem’s incredible Holocaust survival story was questioned for decades until a DNA test provided long-awaited answers. Discover the truth about ‘The Jewish Nazi’.
Image: Alex Kurezem as a young boy with Nazi officers | The Jewish Nazi?
The Jewish Nazi? tells the remarkable story of a Jewish child who survives the Holocaust as the Nazi’s youngest soldier, hides his shocking secret in Australia for 50 years, has had four false identities, been wrongly 'reunited' with two long-lost families and now – thanks to a DNA breakthrough – discovers his true identity in the twilight of his life. The show airs Sunday, 26th January on Sky HISTORY.
For most of us, it is impossible to comprehend what Holocaust survivors suffered at the hands of the Nazis. In fact, in a small number of cases the survivor’s account has been so remarkable, so implausible, that they have been accused of exaggerating or even lying.
Alex Kurzem’s story is one of those incredible stories that has been clouded by confusion and scepticism for decades. But what is the truth?
A survival story
In 1941, a five-year-old boy was living with his mother, father, brother and sister in the village of Koidanov in Belarus. His mother told him that when the morning came, soldiers would be coming to their house to kill them all. In the middle of the night the boy crept out of the house to hide in the forest.
From his hiding place the next morning, he watched the soldiers arrive. He watched as they brought his mother and siblings outside the home. He watched as they were massacred. Years later it was discovered that his father was taken away to a concentration camp.
The boy survived alone in the forest for eight months. He was foraging for food (including searching corpses that the soldiers had left behind), sleeping in trees to avoid wolf attacks, and surviving sub-zero temperatures.
Becoming ‘The Jewish Nazi’
In 1942 the boy was found by a battalion of Latvian soldiers who were enforcing Nazi rule in Belarus. They took him to their headquarters, but he was not killed. Instead, the soldiers decided he would be their ‘mascot’.
They told him not to tell anyone that he was Jewish. He was given a new identity as Uldis Kurzemnieks, a Russian orphan who had lost his parents in the forest.
For the next two years ‘Uldis’ remained with the soldiers. He witnessed (and felt compelled to celebrate) the torture and murder of Jewish people, including children of his own age. He was dressed in a child size uniform and SS regalia and given a gun.
When the Soviets began to regain ground from the Nazis in 1944, ‘Uldis’ was adopted by Jekabs Dzenis and his family. Dzenis was a middle-class owner of a factory in Riga, Latvia.
In 1949 the family migrated to Melbourne, Australia. All Uldis took with him was an old suitcase.
Why was Alex’s story so controversial?
The boy spent the rest of his life in Melbourne. He married, worked as a TV repair man, and had children of his own. For decades he did not speak about his childhood to anyone, including his closest family.
When he did tell his son he was in his 60s. Alex (as he was now calling himself) showed his family the contents of the suitcase that he had brought with him from Latvia. It contained two sepia photographs of a small blonde boy dressed in a Latvian SS uniform.
In 2007, Alex’s son published the story of his father’s life as a memoir called The Mascot. The book was a bestseller that spawned an award-winning documentary and attracted global media attention as well as interest from filmmakers. However, while the story generated commercial success, it was also met with doubt and accusations of fraud, including from members of both the Latvian and Jewish communities.
In 2009, the US academic (and a descendant of Holocaust survivors) Dr Barry Resnick saw Kurzem featured on a US TV show. Certain aspects of the story made him sceptical about the truth of Kurzem’s account.
Working with US forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick (who had exposed Holocaust fraudsters in the past) he set about investigating Kurzem’s heritage.
Alex Kurzem believed that he was born Ilya Galperin, the son of Solomon Galperin. Solomon, who survived the concentration camp, had remarried and had another son, Erik. Scientists and historians said that a DNA test of both Erik Galperin and Alex Kurzem would provide answers, but Kurzem refused.
'They call me a liar, a fake. Would you co-operate with people like that? If she [Fitzpatrick] had asked in a nice way… I would’ve done it.'
Doubts were further compounded when it was discovered that a Belarusian family that were previously believed to be related to Kurzem were found not be related to him at all.
Kurzem’s story also had inconsistencies with known historical facts. For example, Kurzem said that the massacre of Koidanov took two days, whereas documents and testimonies from the time suggest it happened in a single afternoon.
What’s the truth?
After years of doubts, accusations, research and investigation, it is now widely accepted that the core elements of Alex Kurzem’s Holocaust survival story are true.
The evidence that supports his story includes:
- Newly discovered records of a massacre that took place on 21st October 1941 in the Belarus village of Koidanov.
- The diary of a soldier in the 18th Kurzeme Police Battalion, held by Stanford University. The entry on 12th July 1942 says that his battalion picked up a ‘foster son whose parents are unknown’. It also said that the boy had been given the name Uldis Kurzemnieks.
- A Nazi propaganda reel from 1943 shows footage of a boy referred to as 'The Mascot' playing with Aryan children.
- The two photos Kurzem kept in his childhood suitcase show him dressed in SS uniform as a child and surrounded by Nazi soldiers.
In 2020, after 11 years of refusing, Kurzem agreed to take a DNA test to 'shut them up' and 'prove them wrong'. The test did indeed prove that Alex was 100% Jewish and from Koidanov in Belarus. It was also discovered he had cousins who originated from Koidanov living in Canada.
Less than two years after the DNA test affirmed his identity, Alex Kurzem died of complications from Covid-19 in January 2022.
"We can never get proof that he watched his family get murdered, but it is historical fact that he was picked up in a forest. And now we know he is Jewish and from Koidanov. To me, that gives credibility to the rest of his story.”
Colleen Fitzpatrick, genetic genealogist.
