Alex Kurzem

Alex (Uldis) Kurzem (also Uldis Kurzemnieks, 18 November 1933 – 31 January 2022) was an Australian pensioner originally from the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and a centre-point of a long-standing controversy regarding his Holocaust memoir which has led to a financial windfall in the early 21st century. translated into 13 languages; both entitled The Mascot.

Kurzem said that he escaped, while seeing the mass murder and that after months of living in the forest he was captured and taken to a site where Jews were being assassinated. He was saved from probable death by Jēkabs Kūlis, a sergeant of a Latvian police battalion after begging for bread and making the drunken soldiers laugh. Kūlis adopted him as the battalion's mascot, after secretly warning him never to reveal his Jewish identity. According to Kurzem's memory Kulis and his commander, Kārlis Lobe changed the story and rehearsed with him a narrative by which he was a Russian orphan who had lost his parents in the forest. The story was reiterated to him following the war by his former commanders and Latvian family. This was the narrative he told his family until he began opening up to the past. ) wrote and produced a documentary (with Lina Caneva) entitled The Mascot, which tells his father's story of his childhood with the Latvian SS. Mark subsequently wrote a book, The Mascot, Unravelling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood, which tells the same story. It was reported his story has inspired a full-length Hollywood feature film.

In 2025, Dan Goldberg released a documentary, The Jewish Nazi?, about the subject.

Controversy Suspicions about the accuracy and authenticity of Kurzem's story were first raised in the late 1990s at the Melbourne Holocaust Centre, when, according to Forensic researcher Colleen Fitzpatrick, a visiting Kurzem offered to pay $17,000 to say he was Jewish. Fitzpatrick, who was previously instrumental in exposing two books about the Holocaust as fraudulent, wrote in 2012 that there are similarities in Kurzem's narrative to other falsified Holocaust narratives. She further reported that Maisel had read accounts from the Yizkor book of Koidanow stating that the 1941 massacre was done in a surprise action and was over within hours - contrary to Kurzem's claims. Both Fitzpatrick and Maisel had received evasive answers from Kurzem when asking him about memories that most survivors find emotionally charged, specifically his family's murder and how he hid his circumcision from others. Fitzpatrick discovered that the GILF document on which Kurzem's reparations were based had been altered; although Kurzem claims that these alterations were performed to translate the originally Russian-language document into English, the original document has never been supplied. On September 21, 2012, Dan Goldman, a reporter for Israel's daily newspaper Haaretz, published an article about the investigation into Kurzem's story. Kurzem was quoted in the article that he "never said" he was Ilya Galperin. Despite previously asking to take a DNA test as reported by Keith Moor in 2011, Goldberg reports that Kurzem will take the test.

As of 2013, Alex Kurzem has been cleared to continue receiving compensation from the German Government. The Jewish Claims Conference ordered the investigation. The report of the ombudsman was "satisfied Mr Kurzem was Jewish; was separated from his parents during the war; lived under a false identity for at least 18 months, and; that his life had been in danger".

There is no doubt that he is the "mascot" boy, but the members of the Latvian Legion unit still claim they were not part of the Slonim massacre and had not participated in any atrocities in accordance with the deposition Kurzem wrote for Kārlis Lobe. In the book Mark Kurzem tells of the doubts raised on both sides, claiming the Latvian denials were planned and expected but that the Jewish ones were a surprise.

In 2019 Kurzem undertook a DNA test and in 2020, Fitzpatrick concluded that Kurzem is 100% Ashkenazi Jewish, comes from the region of Belarus he claimed to, and has living relatives in Canada. These cousins provided family photographs that bolster the case for Kurzem's account of his origin.

Death Kurzem died of COVID-19 in Melbourne, on 31 January 2022, at the age of 88.