Alex Kurzem

Alex (Uldis) Kurzem (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. He was the subject of a television documentary and a best-selling book by his son, translated into 13 languages; both entitled ''The Mascot''.

According to the story, Alex Kurzem is the former boy mascot (hence the book title) of a Latvian police ''Schutzmannschaft'' Battalion 18, who witnessed the massacre of his Jewish mother as a five-year-old boy and subsequently emigrated to Australia. Kurzem maintained that he was a Holocaust survivor from Belarus. However, the authenticity of his account has been called into question at several points. When put under further scrutiny by the Jewish-American scholars and asked to prove his survivor's tale by taking a DNA test, Kurzem refused. He also dismissed out of hand the archival records of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University as allegedly falsified but eventually admitted: "I might be anybody, but I have got no proof who I am."

In 2020, genetic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick concluded that Kurzem is 100% Ashkenazi Jewish came from the region of Belarus he claimed to, and had living relatives in Canada. These cousins provided family photographs that bolster the case for Kurzem's account of his origin. Provided by Wikipedia