Pod Insights Personally Toy Soldier, Episode 5: ‘L’chaim – To Life’ About this episode As Alex’s newfound family grapples with who he really was and what side of the war he was fighting for, COVID sets in. Will Alex ever get a real reunion?
Transcript 3,003 words · 15 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 Hi, I just had to tell you that I think your podcast has changed my life.
0:06 Speaker 01 Season one of Sold a Story hit a nerve. It was about teaching kids to read. We have gotten this wrong in New York and all across the nation. Now we're back with a new season. This time, we go beyond reading.
0:19 Speaker 00 I've literally been told by my district that I should not be teaching math. I should be facilitating math.
0:26 Speaker 01 I'm Emily Hanford. Go to your podcast app and follow Sold a Story.
0:31 Speaker 02 This is a CBC Podcast.
0:38 Speaker 03 I kindly ask you to be upstanding as I recite in ancient Hebrew, Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning.
0:50 Speaker 03 Yitkadal ve yitkadash shmeirabah ve yimruh amen.
0:56 Speaker 04 It's early 2022. I'm dressed in black and wearing a face mask, as are the other 50 or so people around me. At the front of the room sits a coffin and resting on top, a tattered brown suitcase.
1:15 Speaker 03 Today, we come together to remember a survivor in every sense of the word.
1:23 Speaker 03 With Alex's passing comes the end of an era and a most remarkable story.
1:32 Speaker 04 For more than a decade, I've followed that story. I've come to understand it as well as anyone outside of it really could. I've spoken to just about everyone related to it who'd agreed to sit down with me. And finally, I was to meet with the man at the story's centre one last time.
1:54 Speaker 04 But I was too late.
1:59 Speaker 03 Alex was a devoted husband and father. He loved to regale his family with stories that were uplifting and amusing. He was a loving husband to Patricia and a pretty easygoing dad to his three boys. Alex instilled in his children an understanding that life isn't always fair, but you've just pretty much got to get on with things. On the surface, Alex's adult life appeared to be relatively ordinary, but one cannot experience the amount of trauma that Alex did without repercussions.
2:41 Speaker 03 When he could carry the burden of his childhood no longer, Alex disclosed his past to his family and began an extraordinary journey of discovery. Alex took a DNA test, which showed that he was indeed 100% Ashkenazi Jew. This was the verification needed to resolve the mystery of his past. It was then that Colleen Fitzpatrick, a forensic genealogist, restarted her quest to research Alex's DNA matches to find out if there were any of Alex's family still remaining.
3:25 Speaker 03 During this time, journalist Dan Goldberg became re-involved and also assisted Alex in discovering the truth of his family origins. As recently as two weeks ago, Dan was on his way to interview Alex once again in order to complete documenting Alex's extraordinary life story. Sadly, this was not to happen. Alex passed away on the 31st of January due to complications related to Covid. We can be so very grateful that Alex died knowing who he was,
4:10 Speaker 03 where he'd come from, and who he had become.
4:25 Speaker 04 I'm Dan Goldberg, I'm from CBC's Personally. This is the final episode of Toy Soldier.
4:45 Speaker 04 Okay Leon, so you've got your DNA there?
4:51 Speaker 05 This is my DNA, which basically has all the matches. And then you can see here Alex Kurtz, my first cousin.
5:06 Speaker 04 Two years before the funeral, Leon Edelman was just learning who Alex was and how the two were genetically linked. For Alex, it was the end of a long and desperate search for his identity and his family. For Leon, it was the discovery of a relative who'd survived what so few had.
5:28 Speaker 05 He is the closest family that I think I have on my father's side. There's nobody else that I have.
5:36 Speaker 04 But soon Leon learned how Alex survived the war, which side he was on.
5:44 Speaker 04 And the ultimate twist in the tale is that your father survived as a partisan. Remember, partisans were the guerrilla fighters resisting the Nazis. And Aldis, as his name was then, was in a unit that was killing partisans. And then you just start to...
6:06 Speaker 04 How do you reconcile?
6:10 Speaker 05 Honestly, after a few rounds of going around and around, I do come to the conclusion that it is a miracle and it is our family.
6:23 Speaker 05 So we welcome him. He's one of ours. I know that the next question will be, what or why or how do you think about Alex and what he did? He was a child. He had no choice. This was a choiceless choice. I think he had to survive.
6:54 Speaker 05 Having the possibility of meeting Alex face to face was quite special.
7:04 Speaker 04 But Alex was in Australia while his new relatives were in Canada. And these genealogical dots began connecting in March of 2020. Yeah, that March. The COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns changed everything.
7:23 Speaker 04 A tight hug at the airport, a clink of glasses, a meal around a table. Suddenly, none of it was possible.
7:35 Speaker 04 But a reunion still was.
7:40 Speaker 05 Hi, Alex.
7:42 Speaker 06 Hello.
7:42 Speaker 05 How are you?
7:43 Speaker 07 Hi, Alex.
7:45 Speaker 04 This is Alex, meeting members of his newfound family for the first time over a video call.
7:51 Speaker 06 Hello, girls and boys.
7:53 Speaker 05 Girls and boys. Is Martin with you?
7:56 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, he's here. Who is that lady?
8:00 Speaker 08 Hi, Alex. I'm Beth. Linda.
8:02 Speaker 06 Ah, Lindy. Yeah, the one I seen in the notes here.
8:06 Speaker 04 Lindy Meshwork is Alex's second cousin.
8:10 Speaker 08 We arranged a Zoom call. You know, and I'm looking at him and I could see some family resemblances. And my father, Ben, was on that call and he got very, very emotional. He was crying, you know, and Alex cried.
8:32 Speaker 08 Yeah, it was very emotional.
8:37 Speaker 08 And I hope that it gave him some kind of peace to know that he had family that believed him.
8:46 Speaker 04 Lindy's dad, Ben Solsky, is the oldest of Alex's surviving relatives.
8:53 Speaker 08 So Ben, meet your cousin Alex. Alex, meet your cousin Ben.
8:57 Speaker 06 Yeah, it took 85 years to find somebody. That's unbelievable. Unbelievable.
9:10 Speaker 05 Then you want to start, what's on your mind?
9:12 Speaker 09 Let me say something to you. You don't have to prove anything, Alex. You don't have to justify what happened to you. You don't have to spend the rest of your life trying to prove anything. You have nothing to prove. If anybody doesn't believe you, forgive me, screw them, okay? We love you, we believe you. You don't owe anybody an explanation.
9:36 Speaker 06 I've been fighting for eighty years.
9:38 Speaker 09 You don't owe any apologies. You seem to feel guilt-ridden, there's no reason...
9:45 Speaker 06 I know I did nothing wrong.
9:48 Speaker 09 No, you did nothing wrong.
10:00 Speaker 05 Alex, is there anything that you want to say? Something that is on your mind?
10:07 Speaker 06 It will. See, I never knew I had anybody in the world left. All these years I lived that I'm the only one. Wherever I turned, nobody could find anything for me. They come to a dead end. So I didn't know my name.
10:29 Speaker 04 But there was one name Alex always remembered. A part of him always believed it was his family's name. Panok.
10:40 Speaker 06 My real father, Panok. I believe he was a Panok. Because I went to a kindergarten and they asked us to write our family name, our first letter. And I wrote a big P, like a piano. You know, it looks like a piano written in Russian. And that's how I remember Panok.
11:08 Speaker 04 Alex could still be a Pannock. Records show that there were Pannocks living in his village as far back as the early 1800s. And though the ancestry database didn't connect Alex to anyone with this surname, it doesn't mean he isn't one.
11:25 Speaker 06 I've had three, four names: Pannock, Galperin, Kurzumniks, Kurzum... And I don't know still who I am. I don't know my real name still. Soon you will know. Soon you will know.
11:44 Speaker 04 Alex died without knowing his name. But in his final years, he learned where he came from. And who he came from.
12:08 Speaker 10 Yeah, we've zoomed quite a bit, probably a dozen times over the last few years. Typically, it would be on a Sunday morning. He's probably spent two or three hours on there.
12:20 Speaker 04 Martin Kurzum, Alex's middle son.
12:23 Speaker 10 He always spoke about Ben and Leon and Lindy. He was confused with how they all related to us. But he knew they related, so he knew he fitted in. You could see it on his face.
12:38 Speaker 04 So do you think, given that Covid denied your father the chance to hug his actual family, do you think that you'd like to meet up?
12:49 Speaker 10 I suppose so. That's the thing to do, isn't it? That's the finale. That's it. That's it.
13:23 Speaker 00 Hi, I just had to tell you that I think your podcast has changed my life.
13:30 Speaker 01 Season one of Sold a Story hit a nerve. It was about teaching kids to read. We have gotten this wrong in New York and all across the nation. Now we're back with a new season. This time, we go beyond reading.
13:42 Speaker 00 I've literally been told by my district that I should not be teaching math. I should be facilitating math.
13:49 Speaker 01 I'm Emily Hanford. Go to your podcast app and follow Sold a Story.
14:00 Speaker 11 We're basically here.
14:04 Speaker 11 Oh, Canada.
14:08 Speaker 04 It's early 2023, and I'm driving through a snowstorm to a family reunion. Yep, Montreal's put on a party for us.
14:20 Speaker 04 And I'm picking up a couple more Australians on my way.
14:25 Speaker 11 Okay, everybody gonna sleep out?
14:26 Speaker 10 Yes.
14:27 Speaker 11 Okay.
14:29 Speaker 12 Oh, my God, Dan's driving.
14:31 Speaker 10 Oh.
14:33 Speaker 11 You're afraid. I don't know. It's called ice skating, Karen. Oh, no.
14:41 Speaker 04 That's Martin and his wife Karen. We're on our way to Leon's place, where he and Lindy are waiting for us.
14:49 Speaker 11 So did you have time on the plane to process and have a think about what's happening?
14:57 Speaker 10 Yeah, it's a bit surreal. Who'd know we're gonna be here in bloody Montreal?
15:07 Speaker 11 How many years have you been talking to Leon?
15:12 Speaker 10 Three years.
15:14 Speaker 10 Almost three years to a day. Been talking to Leon and Lindy and Ben.
15:23 Speaker 11 Yeah, a bit of adrenaline being pumped around this city this afternoon.
15:27 Speaker 10 Mmm. Yeah, for all of us, I think.
15:35 Speaker 04 We pull up to an apartment building and inside Leon's waiting by the door.
15:44 Speaker 05 Whoa, somebody at the door. Hello. Coming, coming.
15:50 Speaker 10 From Deir el-Hanah.
15:51 Speaker 05 Hello.
15:52 Speaker 10 Hello, hello.
15:54 Speaker 05 Zouk. Zouk.
15:56 Speaker 10 Lindy, how are you?
15:59 Speaker 08 So good to see you after all.
16:00 Speaker 10 It took a lot to get here.
16:01 Speaker 05 I saw you once on the tour.
16:04 Speaker 08 Oh, you brought the suitcase.
16:07 Speaker 10 I brought the suitcase.
16:08 Speaker 05 I'm looking at you and I'm trying to see Alex. I think for so many, so many weeks or...
16:17 Speaker 08 Years.
16:18 Speaker 05 Years.
16:19 Speaker 10 Years.
16:19 Speaker 05 Finally we see each other.
16:21 Speaker 10 Well, we made it here. Took over 30 hours, but we got here.
16:25 Speaker 08 Welcome.
16:27 Speaker 05 All the stuff in the little suitcase.
16:29 Speaker 10 Yep, all here, tangible, something to take a look at and look through Dad's life. Maybe you can understand a bit more what Dad went through.
16:41 Speaker 08 Wonderful.
16:42 Speaker 10 Trying to find his real name.
16:47 Speaker 04 The family gathers around Leon's living room and Martin places Alex's suitcase on the coffee table.
16:56 Speaker 08 Can we look inside?
16:57 Speaker 10 Yeah.
16:57 Speaker 05 Maybe you can open it.
16:58 Speaker 10 You've got to be careful because one of the hinges is about to fall apart.
17:01 Speaker 08 Yeah.
17:03 Speaker 04 Martin carefully opens up the case.
17:07 Speaker 10 Yeah, so I was a bit... Even here now I feel a bit funny. I should be dead, you know.
17:17 Speaker 04 Leon and Lindy begin looking inside, pulling out fragments of Alex's life.
17:24 Speaker 05 I'm picking up on some of the things and one of the sentences in here is, to me, very...
17:35 Speaker 04 Leon's holding a letter written by Alex.
17:39 Speaker 08 Can you read it?
17:40 Speaker 05 Well, he writes here that "I feel that everything I held dear was stolen from me by the Germans.
17:52 Speaker 05 My entire family, my culture, my language, religion, even my very soul." I think this is
18:03 Speaker 05 this is very, very powerful.
18:07 Speaker 05 "Over time, I forgot my own name, that of my mother, my father, along with anything else that might challenge my identity as a loyal Latin soldier." I mean, look, it's
18:24 Speaker 08 It's heartbreaking.
18:29 Speaker 08 So I want to know, how did Alex feel when it was proven that we were family?
18:38 Speaker 10 Very, very happy and relieved. I could see it in his face. He didn't have to really say it, but I could see it in his face.
18:55 Speaker 01 Is this the right place?
18:58 Speaker 11 Oh, look who's here.
19:04 Speaker 04 One last member of the reunion has flown in from California as a surprise. Colleen Fitzpatrick, the genealogist. Her initial skepticism of Alex's story meant she and Alex were at odds for a time. But once Alex's DNA proved he was who he said he was, she was all in.
19:28 Speaker 04 Colleen spent the last few years tracking down as many of Alex's genetic matches as she could, trying to decipher his family tree.
19:37 Speaker 13 We cracked a lot of it, not the whole story. But we do know his family. We do know where he's from, and we do know he's Jewish.
19:49 Speaker 04 Over time, she grew close to Alex, as well as his family, old and new.
19:56 Speaker 13 I mean, this is really amazing that we're all here.
19:59 Speaker 08 It's surreal.
20:00 Speaker 13 Yeah, it's like, shouldn't we be on Zoom?
20:05 Speaker 13 It's like too much to deal. Yeah, it's like, the whole, I mean, the whole story is amazing, but that we can all, kind of all of a sudden, be in the same room.
20:16 Speaker 08 You're now part of the extended family.
20:17 Speaker 13 I am, of course.
20:18 Speaker 08 Yeah, you are.
20:19 Speaker 13 I was coming through passport control, and they were saying, "Why are you here?" And I said, "I'm here for a family reunion."
20:25 Speaker 08 Very good.
20:28 Speaker 08 Without you, this never would have happened.
20:30 Speaker 13 I'm so touched. It's just an important bringing together.
20:34 Speaker 08 A very special bringing together. If only Alex was here. Oh, yeah.
20:39 Speaker 13 That's the one thing.
20:41 Speaker 08 We should do a toast to Alex.
20:45 Speaker 08 To Alex. To Alex.
20:46 Speaker 13 Alex. Alex.
20:49 Speaker 08 L'chaim. L'chaim. To death.
21:15 Speaker 04 I also toasted Alex. L'chaim, to life, I whispered in Hebrew.
21:23 Speaker 04 It was a moment of elation and heartbreak all at once. I was watching long-lost relatives, descended from Holocaust survivors, find each other halfway across the earth and almost 80 years after the war.
21:38 Speaker 04 But the man at the center of it all was missing.
21:46 Speaker 04 Alex Cursum survived the Holocaust, miraculously so, but was unable to survive Covid. I remember calling Alex's hospital to tell the nurses that the man in their ward was no ordinary patient. I sent them a copy of the book about him so they could see it. And maybe if Alex awoke, he'd be able to see it one last time.
22:13 Speaker 04 When the time came, his son Martin called me from his dying father's bedside to allow me to say bye bye. In the fog of emotion and adrenaline, I can't tell you exactly what I said, but I promised I'd do what he'd asked of me: tell a story to the world.
22:35 Speaker 04 For 35 years of my working life, I've never, ever become a part of the thousands of stories I've written or produced. As journalists, we're supposed to be invisible, but Alex's story was different, so powerful and so personal.
22:52 Speaker 04 I was caught up in its vortex, sucked into the mystery of the mascot.
23:01 Speaker 04 I started writing this story about 15 years ago because I needed to know whether Alex was telling the truth. I now know he was. And it seems like we now know all that we can, but in a story like this one, it wouldn't surprise me if someday there'll be another revelation. After all, Alex always did like a good punchline.
23:33 Speaker 04 What do you think he'd be thinking or saying if he was right there?
23:38 Speaker 14 I hope that he would be saying, "I'm so glad that you believed me."
23:46 Speaker 04 Alex's niece Beba, the first person who heard this story.
23:52 Speaker 14 Because he couldn't understand that people didn't believe him. Because he really wasn't, he wasn't capable of the kind of dissembling that I think many people thought he was. He just wasn't. He was a great storyteller and sure, he could bend things to get the punchline just right. But the truth that he shared with me, you can't manufacture that. They were real. You could see that in his eyes, you could see that in the tremble of his lip. You could see that in the pauses that he took. You could see that in the shaking of his shoulders.
24:36 Speaker 14 It was true, it was for real.
24:43 Speaker 04 Do you miss him?
24:44 Speaker 14 Oh, absolutely. It's like yesterday.
24:50 Speaker 14 It's like yesterday.
25:03 Speaker 14 I feel privileged to have known a person who suffered so heinously at the hands of not just people, but at the hands of fate in such a way that would have turned most people bitter and twisted.
25:23 Speaker 14 But not him.
25:26 Speaker 14 To have known a person who could have experienced so much and still come out the other end with delight on his face, the ability to give other people pleasure and enjoyment to make people laugh. Not to make them miserable or angry, but he,
25:53 Speaker 14 he did just the opposite. He made us all laugh. I mean, how special is that?
26:17 Speaker 04 You've been listening to Toy Soldier from CBC's Personally. The series is reported and produced by me, Dan Goldberg. It's written by Alina Gosch and myself. Mixing and sound design by Julia Whitman. Studio recording and direction by Greg Crittenden. Research by Colin Fitzpatrick, Beba Manglasford, Emeritus Professor Conrad Quaid, Barry Resnick, Maris Lachas and Keith Moore. Anna Ashite is our coordinating producer. Our senior producers are Ashley Mack, Geoff Turner and Andrew Friesen. Executive producers are Ceso Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tonya Springer is the senior manager.
27:00 Speaker 04 Our podcast art was designed by Ingrid Paulsen. Our cross promo producer is Amanda Cox. Our video producers are Evan Agard, Tamina Aziz and John Lee. Arif Noorani is the director and Lesley Merklinger is the executive director of CBC Podcasts. And special thanks to Ian Walker.
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