Australia Uncovered: Hitler’s Jewish Soldier?

Documentary anthology Australia Uncovered returns to SVS this week with new stand-alone docos, beginning with the remarkable story of  Hitler’s Jewish Soldier?

Dan Goldberg, Creative Director, Mint Pictures, said: “This story crossed my desk in 2012 when I was a correspondent filing for Jewish newspapers in America, Canada, Europe, and Israel. Initially it struck me as a possible Holocaust hoax, and so I travelled from Sydney to Melbourne to interview this legendary ‘Mascot,’ then in his late 70s, in person. I filed several stories about this alleged hoax, which were syndicated around the world. Like most news, the story petered out and I went back to making documentaries.

“Until mid-2020 when, out of the blue, I received a call from The Mascot. What he told me triggered a moral obligation to file a new story. It quickly became evident that this truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story would make a ripping feature documentary. The end result is a staggering story that provokes bigger questions about secrets and lies, fact and fiction, family, and identity.”

Dubbed “The Mascot,” Hitler’s youngest soldier was, remarkably, a Jewish boy who hid his secret in Australia for almost fifty years before embarking on a rollercoaster ride to uncover his true identity. This is the astonishing story of Alex Kurzem, revealed for the first time in full in Hitler’s Jewish Soldier? – the gripping first instalment in the new season of Australia Uncovered.

As a young boy during the Second World War, Alex Kurzem says he recalls watching from a tree as his entire village, including his family, were murdered by an execution squad. Having escaped certain death by fleeing into the frozen woods of Belorussia, Alex says he survived for several months before being captured and taken in by a Latvian battalion that was later incorporated into the SS.

Instead of killing Alex, the battalion made him their child soldier, their ‘Mascot.’ They gave him a false name, fake birth date, adorned him with a pint-sized uniform and armed him with a shorn-off rifle. When the Russians invaded and the fighting was deemed to be too dangerous, Alex was removed from the Front and fostered by a Latvian chocolatier named Jekabs Dzenis. The Dzenis family migrated to Australia in 1949, taking Alex with them.

Building a new life in Melbourne, Alex married and had three children, working in the circus before becoming a TV repairman. He kept his secret for almost fifty years, until – facing a cancer scare – he told his children his survival story.

Hitler’s Jewish Soldier? investigates whether Alex’s incredible survival story – as well as the discovery of his long-lost Jewish family in the late 1990s – is in fact true. As Jewish journalist and director Dan Goldberg journeys across the globe in a bid to solve the mystery of The Mascot, what unfolds is an astounding true crime-esque investigation that will keep you guessing until the very end.

Hitler’s Jewish Soldier? is a Mint Pictures production for SBS. Principal production funding from Screen Australia and SBS. Financed with support from Screen NSW.

8:40pm Thursday 8 February on SBS.