Latvin Mascot Alex Kurzem: NAZI Celeberty


Figure 1.--Here a NAZI newsreel shows Alex in what looks kike a Wafen-SS uniform playing blindmans bluff with the German children in what look to be some kind of orphanage. As far as we know it was not idenhtified in the newsreel. There were Latvian subtitles so it was apparently shown in both Germany and Latvia and probanly other German occupied ares.

Alex Kurzem soon became the Latvian Waffen-SS's most famous mascot. The Germans even notice him. In his uniform he was feted before the Führer himself. NAZI newsreels presented him as the "the Reich's youngest Nazi". He was shown wearing his uniform and playing with German children. He apparently worked for a time at an orphanage for German children. He was filmed keeping charge of German children. ("Me, a Jew. Had they but known.") He looks very Aryan. At the time the SS was kidnapping children in occupied countries that look Aryan for the Lebensborn prigram. Perhaps the children he is shown with are Lenenborn children. The Lebensorn children were very carefully examined. As Alex was more of a soldier's mascot, he was never examined. As he was circumsized, he would have been easily identified as a Jew. "They didn't know that I was a Jewish boy who had escaped a Nazi death squad. They thought I was a Russian orphan." One has to wonder why the Germans wanted him in their propganda films. Perhaps they were impressed that a child was fighting for them. Goebekls who woukd have approved such depictiins may have been impressed because it suggested the level of commitment needed for Total War. Of course the Germans themselves woukd soon be sending their children into battle. as for Alex he had to be creful hat he saud and did. He was apparently a quick learner. Ojly in his thoughts was he free, He reports, "I hated the soldiers' brutality, their inhumanity. But I don't deny that, as a little boy, I at times loved being the center of attention. I was doing it to survive. To please them. But all the time I was terrified they would discover my real identity and I would also be shot for my faith."







HBC







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Created: 5:39 AM 6/28/2012
Last updated: 5:39 AM 6/28/2012