\nby Mark Kurzem<\/p>\n
Katie says:<\/p>\n I read the most unbelievable book last week. \u00a0It was quite morbid in parts. \u00a0I finished it in about 8 hours, \u00a0it was so riveting. Best read I have had for awhile.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It certainly sounds <\/em>fascinating! \u00a0Here’s the synopsis from Amazon:<\/p>\n When a Nazi death squad massacred his mother and fellow villagers, five-year-old Alex Kurzem escaped, hiding in the freezing Russian forest until he was picked up by a group of Latvian SS soldiers. Alex was able to hide his Jewish identity and win over the soldiers, becoming their mascot and an honorary \u201ccorporal\u201d in the SS with his own uniform. But what began as a desperate bid for survival became a performance that delighted the highest ranks of the Nazi elite. And so a young Jewish boy ended up starring in a Nazi propaganda film.<\/p>\n After sixty-three years of silence, Alex revealed his terrible secret to his son Mark. With his son\u2019s help, Alex retraced his past in search of answers and vindication. His story is at once a terrifying account of survival and its psychological cost as well as a brutally honest examination of identity, complicity, and memory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n More disturbing non-fiction reflections on warfare can be found in the Wretched Warfare<\/a> aisle of The Library Eclectica<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Katie has a Wretched Recommendation of the non-fiction variety: The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood by Mark Kurzem Katie says: I read the most unbelievable book last week. \u00a0It was quite morbid in parts. \u00a0I finished it in about 8 hours, \u00a0it was so riveting. Best read I have had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-library"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/mascot.jpg\" "\\"The")
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