Alex Kurzem was accused of fabricating his remarkable story about being a Jewish orphan who was turned into a Nazi poster boy, but now he has finally been vindicated.
A Victorian Holocaust survivor who told of his life as a “Nazi mascot” has finally cleared his name.
For years Alex Kurzem, 85, had been accused of making up the remarkable story that he was a Jewish orphan whose family was killed by the Nazis in Soviet Belarus during World War II.
But now the Sunday Herald Sun can reveal new DNA evidence has proven it’s true.
His international best-selling book The Mascot claimed he survived the Holocaust after being rescued from a forest by a German-aligned Latvian auxiliary police battalion during the war.
Mr Kurzem, who was treated like a mascot by the unit, was the subject of an award-winning 2004 ABC documentary, and he appeared on 60 Minutes in the US in 2009.
But in 2011, several international investigations were launched amid concerns that his supposed Jewish background was fake, and that he should no longer receive compensation from Germany as a Holocaust survivor.
While an independent ombudsman in the US later backed Mr Kurzem’s case, some key figures still doubted his story.
But recent results from a DNA test have confirmed he is Jewish, and that he probably came from the former Belarus village of Koidanov, which was a Nazi massacre site during the war.
And DNA matches have linked him to close family members in Canada, who have provided photographs that may include his parents and siblings.
Read the article by John Masanauskas in the Herald Sun.