Stranger than fiction: Uncovering Hitler’s Jewish soldier

Nazi mascot or Holocaust hoax? Filmmaker and journalist DAN GOLDBERG tracks down the truth in his latest documentary.

It’s a story 20 years in the making – and one that seems too strange to be true.

As a young Jewish boy during the Second World War, Alex Kurzem recalls watching his entire village, including his family, murdered by an execution squad. Kurzem had fled to nearby Belorussian woods, where he survived for several months, until his fateful capture by a Latvian battalion that was later incorporated into the SS military.

Instead of killing Kurzem, the battalion gave him a new name, fake birthdate, pint-sized uniform and rifle – and turned him into their mascot: a Nazi child soldier.

That is the story Kurzem told, but could it possibly have happened? That is the question posed in Hitler’s Jewish Soldier? – the first instalment in the new season of Australia Uncovered, SBS’s critically-acclaimed documentary collection.

When the Russians invaded, Kurzem was fostered by a Latvian family and migrated to Australia, where he later married and had three children. He kept his survival story secret for almost 50 years, until a cancer scare forced his confession to his children.

“He made himself forget his Jewish name, because he knew that his Jewish name would get him killed,” said the film's director Dan Goldberg, whose award-winning works also include Food Fighter, Birdsville or Bust and The Bowraville Murders.

“We know that Holocaust survivors tended not to speak for decades after the war. The vast majority were so traumatised, they began a new life and compartmentalised in their brains.”

Kurzem's unique story has followed Goldberg across his journalism career. He first reported on the mascot in 2002 in the Australian Jewish News, but it wasn't until a decade later that he paid closer attention.

“It really landed on my desk in 2012, when the allegations of a hoax were broken by the Herald Sun,” said Goldberg, who was the Australian correspondent for Haaretz, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and The Jewish Chronicle at the time.

“My editors wanted me to follow the story, so I picked it up and phoned the mascot, and he vehemently denied the claims. I just felt like there was something more to it. I decided to go on a plane from Sydney to Melbourne and interview him myself. That was really the beginning.”

Goldberg published a few stories, but like all news, it eventually petered out. That was until 2021, when he received an out-of-the-blue call from Kurzem that “triggered a moral obligation to file a new story”.

“[Kurzem] said he’d proven them all wrong. At that moment, I was taken aback. I said if it was true, I would write a new story and update [what I wrote] from 10 years ago.

“I sat down to research and write, and that’s when everywhere I turned, there was another jaw-dropping moment. I just realised this is bigger than a feature article – I’m going to make a documentary.”

Weaving interviews with Kurzem’s relatives, historians and sceptics alongside reenacted footage of the mascot, Hitler’s Jewish Soldier? investigates the truth of Kurzem’s survival story, his Jewish identity and the discovery of his long-lost family.

Goldberg felt a heavy responsibility investigating a possible Holocaust hoax, both as a journalist and as a Jew.

“In the course of making the documentary, I remained sceptical because [I’m a] journalist and that’s our training – to always question and probe and interrogate,” he said.

“These stories are, by definition, difficult because they challenge, especially for us Jews, our own moral compass on Holocaust history. The fact that he was a Jew who was adopted into a Latvian battalion that was absorbed into the SS is confronting for us, the fact that he survived in that arena.”

Goldberg said the development of the documentary was a “long, long process” – one which saw him travel to all corners of the globe and took almost three years to complete.

Like all Holocaust stories, it’s not light-hearted viewing. The anecdote of young Kurzem being asked by battalion members to participate in the torture of a fellow young Jewish boy is one of many that stays with the audience beyond the documentary’s end.

“Because it is such a rollercoaster story, we wanted to take the viewer through three emotional arcs,” Goldberg concluded.

“In the first act of the film, it’s compassion and empathy. In act two, there’s the hoax and the doubt. Then we come to the closing of the film, and it’s about redemption and resolution.

“[It] is a staggering story that provokes bigger questions about secrets and lies, fact and fiction, family, and identity.”

Australia Uncovered premieres with Hitler’s Jewish Soldier? on Thursday 8 February on SBS and SBS on Demand. A Mint Pictures production, Hitler's Jewish Soldier? was funded by SBS, Screen Australia and Screen NSW.