This film tells the staggering story of Melbourne's Alex Kurzem, a young boy who escaped the massacre of his family's shtetl in Belarus in 1941. He survived in the woods during one of the coldest winters on record, only to be captured by a Latvian battalion. Instead of killing him, they took pity on him and gave him a new name, adorned him with a uniform and a gun, and made him their child mascot, “Hitler's youngest soldier.” Building on the international bestselling book ‘The Mascot’ and an award-winning ABC documentary, the film goes above and beyond, tracing Alex’s journey to Australia with his adopted Latvian family, and his eventual life in the Melbourne suburb of Altona.
This film tells the staggering story of Melbourne's Alex Kurzem, a young boy who escaped the massacre of his family's shtetl in Belarus in 1941. He survived in the woods during one of the coldest winters on record, only to be captured by a Latvian battalion. Instead of killing him, they took pity on him and gave him a new name, adorned him with a uniform and a gun, and made him their child mascot, “Hitler's youngest soldier.” Building on the international bestselling book ‘The Mascot’ and an award-winning ABC documentary, the film goes above and beyond, tracing Alex’s journey to Australia with his adopted Latvian family, and his eventual life in the Melbourne suburb of Altona.
Dan Goldberg
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