‘Hitler’s Jewish Soldier?’ has won the National Award for Best Documentary at the Asian Academy Creative Awards and been longlisted for the Walkley Award for Best Documentary.
The history-mystery was produced by Mint Pictures for ‘Australia Uncovered’, SBS’s premium strand of single documentaries.
It was selected by the judges of the Asian Academy as the best one-off documentary in Australia and will now go head-to-head with the best documentaries in Asia for the major award.
It faces competition from China, India, Hong Kong, The Philippines, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. The winner will be announced at the awards gala in Singapore on December 3-4.
The awards are billed as “Asia-Pacific’s most prestigious awards for creative excellence” across 17 nations in the region.
Yesterday’s announcement comes as the documentary was long-listed for the Walkley Award for Best Documentary.
The Walkley is Australia’s premier journalistic award and recognises work that combines “journalistic rigour with courageous and creative filmmaking”.
‘Hitler’s Jewish Soldier?’ is up against documentaries about Ben Roberts-Smith, Western Sydney Wanderers and racing driver Renee Gracie, among others.
The top three will be selected on October 10 with the winner announced at the gala on November 19.
The two gongs come after the feature-length version of the documentary – titled ‘The Jewish Nazi?’ – won the Gold Remi Award at Worldfest in Houston and Best Feature Documentary Award at Cannes World Film Festival as well as the Best Editing Award at Montreal Film Festival. It has been selected for festivals in America and Europe, New Zealand and Canada.
It tells the staggering story of Melbourne’s Alex Kurzem, who claimed he witnessed his family being massacred in Byelorussia in 1941, escaped to the freezing forest as a young boy but was captured by a Latvian battalion who – instead of killing him – made him their toy soldier, their ‘Mascot’.
Somehow, he managed to hide his Jewish identity and dupe the battalion into believing he was a Russian orphan. The battalion, which was later absorbed into the Waffen-SS, gave him a new name, a fake birth date, mini unform and a shorn-off gun.
After the war he emigrated to Australia and kept his secret for 50 years before revealing it to his family. It set off a search for his real identity, which resulted in multiple false names, a family reunion that wasn’t and a DNA revelation with a blistering sting in the tail.
What unfolds is a gripping true crime-esque investigation. It follows director Dan Goldberg as he delves into the mystery of the man dubbed ‘The Mascot’ and the decade-long search by Dr Barry Resnick, who didn’t believe the story, and Dr Colleen Fitzpatrick, a renowned American forensic genealogist who cracked the DNA code to reveal his true family.
It was financed by SBS and Screen Australia in association with Screen NSW. Abacus Media is the international distributor.
