fascinating stuff, who knows how many stories where lost

The secret history of the Nazi mascot
By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Melbourne

Alex Kurzem came to Australia in 1949 carrying just a small brown briefcase, but weighed down by some harrowing psychological and emotional baggage.

Tucked away in his briefcase were the secrets of his past - fragments of his life that he kept hidden for decades.

In 1997, after raising a family in Melbourne with his Australian bride, he finally revealed himself. He told how, at the age of five, he had been adopted by the SS and became a Nazi mascot.

His personal history, one of the most remarkable stories to emerge from World War II, was published recently in a book entitled The Mascot.

"They gave me a uniform, a little gun and little pistol," Alex told the BBC.

"They gave me little jobs to do - to polish shoes, carry water or light a fire. But my main job was to entertain the soldiers. To make them feel a bit happier."

Painful memories

In newsreels, he was paraded as 'the Reich's youngest Nazi' and he witnessed some unspeakable atrocities.

But his SS masters never discovered the most essential detail about his life: their little Nazi mascot was Jewish.

"They didn't know that I was a Jewish boy who had escaped a Nazi death squad. They thought I was a Russian orphan."

His story starts where his childhood memories begin - in a village in Belarus on 20 October 1941, the day it was invaded by the German army.

"I remember the German army invading the village, lining up all the men in the city square and shooting them. My mother told me that my father had been killed, and that we would all be killed."

"I didn't want to die, so in the middle of the night I tried to escape. I went to kiss my mother goodbye, and ran up into the hill overlooking the village until the morning came."

That was the day his family was massacred - his mother, his brother, his sister.

"I was very traumatised. I remember biting my hand so I couldn't cry out loud, because if I did they would have seen me hiding in the forest. I can't remember exactly what happened. I think I must have passed out a few times. It was terrible."

False identity

"When the shooting stopped I had no idea where to go so I went to live in the forests, because I couldn't go back. I was the only one left. I must have been five or six."

"I went into the forest but no-one wanted me. I knocked on peoples' doors and they gave me bits of bread but they told me to move on. Nobody took me in."

He survived by scavenging clothes from the bodies of dead soldiers.

After about nine months in the forest, a local man handed him over to the Latvian police brigade, which later became incorporated in the Nazi SS.

That very day, people were being lined up for execution, and Alex thought he, too, was about to die.

"There was a soldier near me and I said, 'Before you kill me, can you give me a bit of bread?' He looked at me, and took me around the back of the school. He examined me and saw that I was Jewish. "No good, no good," he said. 'Look I don't want to kill, but I can't leave you here because you will perish.

"'I'll take you with me, give you a new name and tell the other soldiers that you are a Russian orphan.'"

Joining the circus

To this day, Alex Kurzem has no idea why Sergeant Jekabs Kulis took pity on him. Whatever his motives, it certainly helped that Alex had Aryan looks. And together, they kept the secret.

"Every moment I had to remind myself not to let my guard down, because if ever anyone found out, I was dead. I was scared of the Russians shooting me and the Germans discovering I was Jewish. I had no-one to turn to."

Young Alex saw action on the Russian front, and was even used by the SS to lure Jewish people to their deaths.

Outside the cattle trains which carried victims to the concentration camps, he handed out chocolate bars to tempt them in.

Then, in 1944, with the Nazis facing almost certain defeat, the commander of the SS unit sent him to live with a Latvian family.

Five years later, he managed to reach Australia. For a time, he worked in a circus and eventually became a television repair man in Melbourne.

All the time, he kept his past life to himself, not even telling his Australian wife, Patricia.

"When I left Europe I said 'forget about your past. You are going to a new country and a new life. Switch off and don't even think about it.'

"I managed to do it. I told people I lost my parents in the war, but I didn't go into detail. I kept the secret and never told anyone."

It was not until 1997 that he finally told his family, and along with his son, Mark, set about discovering more about his past life.

After visiting the village where he was born, they found out his real name was Ilya Galperin, and even uncovered a film in a Latvian archive of Alex in full SS regalia.

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oh please please please

It is a tight race currently for the democratic nomination, and i am seriously considering registering as a democrat just so i can caucus for Obama. This article from a local paper gives me hope:

THE RACE: The presidential race for Democrats in Iowa.

THE NUMBERS: --

Barack Obama, 30 percent

Hillary Clinton, 26 percent

John Edwards, 22 percent

Bill Richardson, 11 percent

OF INTEREST:

It remains a three-person race for Iowa's precinct caucuses, although Obama's lead over Edwards was beyond the margin of sampling error. The poll also asked Iowans whether they're more interested in new direction or experience, with new direction now favored by 55 percent compared to 33 percent who prefer experience. Among the "new direction" voters, 43 percent favor Obama and 17 percent back Clinton.

Richardson was in fourth place, and no other Democrat received more than 5 percent support.

The ABC News/Washington Post telephone poll of 500 adults likely to participate in the caucuses was conducted Nov. 14-18. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

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I was at a church this past weekend, one I have gone to before. After the service one of the ministries was having a fundraising lunch. The head pastor was there and glad-handed my husband and I and congratulated our recent marriage, ending with "Good for God", the mysterious meaning of that phrase deserves its own blog post. In my 15 second interaction with this man I felt like I was being campaigned to by a stereotypical politician, performing what he thought the polls were telling him the voters wanted - Someone to shake hands, offer huddle prayers, and be passionately involved in peoples' lives for the 15 second interaction. This is not the first pastor I have met that gives me this impression, perhaps they teach this at seminary. What got me was that I left the church building very shortly after the handshake experience, and to my surprise as I pulled out of the parking lot, there was the pastor, leaving as well.

This really gets my goat. In the two/three years I have known him he rarely participates in events unless he is the lead prosecution,speaker/pastor. Several times I have been to group studies, Sunday evening worship, and after church lunches and unless he was presenting he ducks out after being there for a few minutes to "make an appearance" or doesnt come at all.

Im not claiming that to be head pastor one needs to be at every single event, that's impossible and unhealthy. But to apply heavy pressure to your colleagues employees to be present at all sorts of things without a break does seem to be inconsistent.

And what the heck does Good for God mean? Maybe it has something to do with Kingdom Worship

brian unger report

Brian Unger used to be on the Daily Show, now he does work on NPR. I thought this was funny and creative. Sometimes political satire is very lazy and goes for cheap shots.

Go to this link and click listen to hear what I am talking about

fenced in

Now Saudi Arabia, like India, is building not one, but two separate border fences on different fronts. The first is on its southern border and is intended to try and get its illegal immigration of 400,000 people a year from neighboring Yemen under control. The second, far more ambitious one, is along the Saudi border with Iraq and is an attempt to prevent Islamist extremists in Iraq, both Sunni and Shiite, from exporting their violence and doctrines back into Saudi Arabia.

However, modern barriers are not just about orders for barbed wire and concrete: They are also about night-vision enhancers and sensors, and every kind of high-tech electronic gadgetry to detect explosives, weapons, drugs and whatever else terrorist organizations and drug gangs try to get across closely monitored borders.

It seems like border fences are popping up everywhere in the world. I hadn't thought about this much beyond the border fence under construction on my country's southern border. The justification for these walls is to keep things perceived as bad out of the home territory.

For some reason it made me think of the Berlin Wall. It was built to keep things, and people, in - not out. It was just as much of a survival technique then as it is now for a society. East Germany was labeled a closed society for many reasons, including the wall. If we continue to wall ourselves off can we be fairly called a closed society?

It doesnt seem to me that closed equals healthy. When I walk into a closed up room the first thing I notice is the musty dead air, and I open a window or a door to let new air in.

When I have a scrape, it heals more quickly when I dont bandage it, but let it have contact with the air.

My business is more successful when I leave the office and meet people, or pick up the phone and call.

I guess my point is that walls concern me as a policy solution. It has a lot of negative impact and feels unnatural.

unless it is the battle of helmsdeep, then I am totally pro-wall.

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Jesus in '08

Apparent of my spiritual development has been my growing knowledge that having faith doesnt equate with a specific political point of view. It has bothered me for some time that people blindly vote for a candidate that has wooed over a certain group of leaders and they say " a vote for this person is a vote for jesus!".... i was reading slate.com this morning and two writers were debating a new book about a extremely conservative college, John Henry College. One of them made some remarks that I liked,



"Virtually all surveys show that 30 percent to 40 percent of Americans go to church once a week. There are a lot of evangelicals out there even if, as you point out, they lead lives that are virtually indistinguishable from other Americans when it comes to divorce, abortion, and the like. I've argued that part of the reason for that is the political obsession of many evangelical leaders, which has in turn seduced so many evangelicals. It is that obsession and seduction that is so beautifully and horribly laid out in God's Harvard. As you recounted over and over, there was no differentiation between Jesus and politics. There was the absolute understanding that to serve Jesus meant to grasp power and manipulate the political system for God's gain. Sadly, this isn't anything new. It is precisely the sort of thing that Jesus came to defeat.
Click Here!

About halfway through the book, something struck me. Not a single student quoted Jesus' sayings to you in justifying their politics. Their justification came from Old Testament admonitions about power. They didn't quote Jesus—at least as related in the book.

Why? It is because it would be impossible to quote Jesus urging young Christian men and women to tackle the political battlefield as if going unto war. It is because Jesus' commands have everything to do with sacrificially loving others and nothing to do with influencing the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court.

I am not saying that Christians shouldn't have a political voice. They should. But they should do it as citizens with opinions in public policy and not as "Christians" presuming they have Jesus' answer to problems—because on virtually every position, they do not. It is perfectly possible to be a Bible-believing, Jesus-loving, born-again Christian and have different perspectives on everything from abortion to Iraq. And that perspective is what is missing from Patrick Henry."

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I just came across this fact in my morning news reading:

Slavery formed 40 percent of of the gross national product in England during the 18th Century


Holy Crap. that is a lot of GNP. I wonder what America's was. no wonder the south was economically devastated after the civil war.