Free The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood Books Online

Be Specific About About Books The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood

Title	:	The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood
Author	:	Mark Kurzem
Book Format	:	Hardcover
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 418 pages
Published	:	November 1st 2007 by Viking Adult (first published February 2000)
Categories	:	Nonfiction. History. World War II. Holocaust. Biography. Autobiography. Memoir. War

The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood

Mark Kurzem

Hardcover | Pages: 418 pages

Rating: 4.02 | 2622 Users | 257 Reviews

Narration In Pursuance Of Books The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood

One man’s struggle with memory and prejudice on the way to recovering his past

Mark Kurzem was happily ensconced in his academic life at Oxford when his father, Alex, showed up on his doorstep with a terrible secret to tell. When a Nazi death squad raided his village at the outset of World War II, Jewish five-year-old Alex Kurzem escaped. After surviving the Russian winter by foraging for food and stealing clothes off dead soldiers, he was discovered by a Nazi-led Latvian police brigade that later became an SS unit. Not knowing he was Jewish, they made him their mascot, dressing the little “corporal” in uniform and toting him from massacre to massacre. Terrified, the resourceful Alex charmed the highest echelons of the Latvian Third Reich, eventually starring in a Nazi propaganda film. When the war ended he was sent to Australia with a family of Latvian refugees.

Fearful of being discovered—as either a Jew or a Nazi—Alex kept the secret of his childhood, even from his loving wife and children. But he grew increasingly tormented and became determined to uncover his Jewish roots and the story of his past. Shunned by a local Holocaust organization, he reached out to his son Mark for help in reclaiming his identity. A survival story, a grim fairy-tale, and a psychological drama, this remarkable memoir asks provocative questions about identity, complicity, and forgiveness.

Identify Books Conducive To The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood

Original Title:	The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood
ISBN:	0670018260 (ISBN13: 9780670018260)
Edition Language:	English

Rating About Books The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood

Ratings: 4.02 From 2622 Users | 257 Reviews

Judgment About Books The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood

Think back to all the memories you have from when you were 5 years old. What can you learn and trust from memories you have at such a young age? This book is about a man who has been hiding the secret of who he was for such a long time that he can hardly remember what the truth is. He asks his son to help him find out who he is and who his family is. This book is the result.

I was very intrigued by this story and I feel as though I would have really enjoyed it overall with the way the father speaks. That being said, the father's story is wonderfully told and I enjoyed his side of things, what I could not get through was the son's narrative. It took nearly forty pages of the son to get to the father. These stories must be told but by the people who experienced it. It would have been wonderful just to have the son relay the story, not his interjections and questions

A survival story, a grim fairy-tale, and a psychological drama, this memoir asks provocative questions about identity, complicity, and forgiveness. When a Nazi death squad raided his Latvian village, Jewish five-year-old Alex escaped. After surviving the winter by foraging for food and stealing clothes off dead soldiers, he was discovered by a Latvian SS unit. Not knowing he was Jewish, they made him their mascot, dressing the little "corporal" in uniform and toting him from massacre to

The Mascot is such a powerful and compelling biography. It is not your traditional biography--Holocaust or not. It is the story of how one man's past is revealed, how a father chooses to share his memories--some quite vivid, others very vague or fuzzy--with his adult son. The father's life is revealed to his son in a series of conversations and through the son's research to validate his father's story.Mark, our narrator, always knew his father had his secrets. His father had a brown bag he

Stunning! Many things about this book reminded me of Roots - especially the unbelievable coincidences that make it possible for a person to rediscover their "roots" when it seems impossible or at least unreasonable. A Jewish boy of five escapes murder at the hands of the Nazis only to be turned over to a group and lined up for the firing squad before being "rescued" and used as a lucky charm or a mascot for a troop that kills his fellow Jews. So traumatized that he keeps his childhood a secret

An interesting underlying story, but the author's style drove me nuts and made the whole thing sound implausible.

I've been drawn to Holocaust memoirs most of my life and have therefore read many. This, by far, is the most extraordinary story I've read -- and it's well documented as not being fictional (unlike some others I could mention). A remarkable human spirit and nearly feral desire to survive are demonstrated by a 5-year-old orphaned Jewish boy who, through his charm and desperation, manages to not only hide his ethnicity, but also survive World War II in Nazi-dominated Latvia as a "mini SS" soldier