How a Soviet Jewish boy became a ‘mascot’ of an SS battalion

In October 1941, five-year-old Ilya Galperin from the suburbs of Minsk experienced a terrible tragedy - the Germans had just executed his entire family.

The boy was hiding in the woods, but a peasant captured him and handed him over to the Nazis. Ilya fell into the hands of the Latvian 18th ‘Kurzeme’ Schutzmanschaft Battalion (security unit), which carried out punitive actions against the Jewish population.

Ilya was saved from certain death by Corporal Jekabs Kulis, who took pity on him. He ordered Galperin to forget his Jewish origins and pretend to be a Russian orphan.

The Latvians “adopted” Ilya as their student and proclaimed him the mascot of the unit. He was given a new name - Alex Kurzem, a military uniform and even a small gun. In the battalion, the boy cleaned the soldiers' boots, made fires and carried water.

More than once Alex witnessed mass executions. "I just had to watch what was happening," he recalled. “There was not a thing I could do, not a thing... I cried often… Sometimes, I regretted I had not been shot with my mother.”

On June 1, 1943, the battalion was incorporated into the Latvian SS Volunteer Legion and Kurzem replaced his old uniform with a new one. "The youngest Nazi of the Reich" became a frequent guest on the pages of newspapers and newsreels.

When the SS men went to the front line, Alex was sent to the rear in Riga. There, he was adopted by a local family, with whom he emigrated to Australia after the war.

When, in 1997, Alex revealed the unpleasant details of his childhood, some of his friends disowned him, while the Melbourne Jewish community accused him of voluntarily joining the SS and his lack of hatred for the Nazis.

“Hatred will not help me,” is how Kurzem-Galperin replied. “I am what I am... I was born a Jew, I was raised by Nazis and Latvians and I married in the Catholic Church.”

Credit: AFP

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Where do Asian black bears live in Russia?

You probably know that brown bears and polar bears live in Russia. And, in the Far East, there is another species of these animals, the Ussuri white-breasted bear, a subspecies of the Asian black bear.
This bear prefers the warm Asian climate, but, in Russia, it can also be found in the Khabarovsk Territory, Primorsky Territory and in the south of Yakutia. It is registered in the ‘Bikin’ national park, the ‘Sikhote-Alin’ and ‘Khankaisky’ reserves and others.
And it is even depicted on the coat of arms of Khabarovsk! In total, there are about 6,500 Ussuri bears in Russia.

Unlike other bears, the Ussuri bear prefers to live in trees rather than in a den, even in winter. As a rule, the bear's hollow is located five meters above the ground and higher.
It;s easy recognizable thanks to its white stripe on its chest and its relatively small size, up to 1.5 in length (or height, if it stands on its hind legs). Ussuri bears feed on plants, berries and nuts, but will also eat small animals, such as frogs.
Young bears are not afraid of people and they can often be seen on the road. However, it is best not to come into contact with them and under no circumstances feed them!

📷 Legion media, TASS, Sputnik

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Привет!

Are you acquainted with Russian composers? I’m sure you’ve heard melodies from Tchaikovsky's ‘Nutcracker’ or 'Swan Lake'. But what about others? Let's learn some facts and vocabulary related to music.

Here you can read more about Russian composers and listen to their most famous pieces of music🎶

❓Which are your favorite?

#russianclasses

📷 Pavel Kuzmichev, Sputnik; Universal Images Group, Corbis, ullstein bild/Getty Images

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This Samara resident SEWS models of temples

There are many temples in Samara: the Pokrovsky Cathedral, which looks like a fairy-tale ‘terem’ (country house), the old Sofia Church made of red bricks and the Russian-style chapel of St. Alexis. And, if you go for a walk on the old part of the city, you will definitely see the house of local artist Nikolai Samokhin. It is easy to recognize: in front of it are light, almost airy models of temples, which Nikolai makes with his hands from cardboard and decorates with improvised materials.

Samokhin’s unusual hobby began over a decade ago. For many years, he worked as a driver’s assistant on a diesel locomotive, then became a boiler plant operator. In order not to get bored between equipment inspections, he decided to do some simple needlework, which he remembered studying in school, and began to build - first a single-dome - and then more complex temples.

Thus, gradually, some truly amazing works began to appear, among which are modest chapels, as well as the majestic Savior-on-Blood in St. Petersburg, the Samara Temple of Sofia and a huge Preobrazhenskaya church with 22 domes in Kizhi. Work on a typical single dome temple takes about ten days, while on such a huge area as the church in Kizhi – several months.

The technique is quite simple, but labor-intensive: the basis is a dense cardboard, which is then covered with material from shiny bags; Samokhin, meanwhile, makes the crosses on the domes of his models with copper wire. He skillfully wields needle and thread, connecting different parts, building neat walls and golden domes, step by step.
Nikolai Samokhin willingly shows everyone who stops at his house his sewn temples and, sometimes, even gives away some of them.

Credit: Georgy Subbotin/Rodina magazine

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