The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father's Nazi Boyhood by Mark KurzemMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
In a way, this is a story too good to fact-check: According to the spellbinding story, Alex Kurzem (father to the author) is the former boy mascot of the collaborationist Latvian police Schutzmannschaft Battalion 18. Certainly, photographs and survivor interviews support this mascot role. Controversy remains as to whether Alex is Jewish and if he actually witnessed the other Jewish residents of his shtetl massacred by an open pit by (an early Nazi massacre mode I read of in Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning) soldiers allied with those that took him in. That the old man could be incorrect about his childhood memories does not surprise me. That he was a "puppy" in Battalion 18 seems beyond doubt - whether he even is Jewish. Regardless, the well-paced story of unraveling this mystery makes for one of the best Holocaust memoir page turners I have read. I hope in years to come, some DNA testing bring some resolution to the matter, as it did (mostly) for the Thomas Jefferson affair as I read of in The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures.
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