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Speaker 1: Jersey and Amanda gam Nation.

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Speaker 2: The life of Alex Cursm was one of the most

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Speaker 2: remarkable stories to emerge from World War Two. A Little

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Speaker 2: Jewish Boy dubbed a Nazi mascot. Tonight, Dan Goldberg's documentary

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Speaker 2: will investigate whether the story of Hitler's Jewish soldier was

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Speaker 2: in fact true or a Holocaust hoax. It's a fascinating story.

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Speaker 1: Dan, Hello, good morning.

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Speaker 2: So tell us about the story that Alex Curzm has

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Speaker 2: told all these years.

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Speaker 1: He maintained that he was a Jewish boy in Belarus.

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Speaker 1: Back then it was Bielarussia, and one day his mother

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Speaker 1: said tomorrow we're going to have to die. He was

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Speaker 1: a very young boy. He said he didn't want to die,

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Speaker 1: and he escaped in the middle of the night, claimed

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Speaker 1: the hill behind his little village house and watched his

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Speaker 1: family in his village being massacred in nineteen forty one,

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Speaker 1: and he then fled to the forest. It was freezing,

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Speaker 1: it was one of the coldest into his own record.

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Speaker 1: He survived foraging on he said, strawberries that grew around corpses,

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Speaker 1: and he had to tie himself to trees because the

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Speaker 1: wolves would eat him. Until he was eventually captured by

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Speaker 1: a Latvian battalion that was operating in the area, and

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Speaker 1: he was about to be executed, and according to his account,

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Speaker 1: he said to the soldier, I'm really hungry, so before

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Speaker 1: you kill me, would you mind giving me a piece

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Speaker 1: of bread? And the soldier said, you know what, We're

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Speaker 1: not going to kill you. We're going to take you

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Speaker 1: and you're going to be our child mascot, our toy soldier.

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Speaker 1: And he joined the battalion and they gave him a

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Speaker 1: mini uniform, pint size uniform and a sure nough rifle

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Speaker 1: and he went with the battalion.

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Speaker 3: That was a story and said his dad about this story.

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Speaker 1: So if that story is not incredible enough, he then survived.

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Speaker 1: The war was sort of fostered by Latviin family, who

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Speaker 1: brought him to Australia where he hid his secret for

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Speaker 1: fifty years. And yes, in twenty nine ten, about a

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Speaker 1: decade ago, when he revealed his story. It was a

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Speaker 1: documentary and may be seen two thousand and three. And

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Speaker 1: then there was a book written by the son in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and seven and slowly questioned started to emerge

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Speaker 1: about is this actually true? Could this child have actually survived?

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Speaker 1: And people started questioning whether it was a hoax, and

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Speaker 1: that's when I stumbled upon the story. There was an

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Speaker 1: expert in the Herald Sound in Melbourne, and I'd heard

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Speaker 1: about the story, but I hadn't quite landed it until

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Speaker 1: it came across my desk. And since then, which is

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Speaker 1: basically the last decade, I've been investigating whether or not

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Speaker 1: it's true and why.

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Speaker 2: If it was a hoax, why would someone do this

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Speaker 2: just a made up story to say I was Jewish?

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Speaker 2: I wasn't, I wasn't a Nazi? Or was it to

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Speaker 2: have an interesting story to sell a book. Why would

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Speaker 2: someone do that?

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Speaker 1: Well, there were various allegations. Yes, one of the allegations

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Speaker 1: was monetization, and there have been a raft of Holocaust

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Speaker 1: hoaxes where people have tried to monetize their story, and

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Speaker 1: as a Jewish journalist, I was hypersensitive to it, and

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Speaker 1: I confess when I first came into the story, I

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Speaker 1: guess I was also thinking, oh, this could be another hoax,

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Speaker 1: and that lured me into it. But as I sifted

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Speaker 1: through the sort of rubble of the story and the

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Speaker 1: rubble of his life, everywhere I turned, it was just WTF,

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Speaker 1: Oh my God, this story just gets crazier and crazier.

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Speaker 3: Also, I would have been a bit of self preservation

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Speaker 3: as well. If that was the situation, he would have

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Speaker 3: just had to go along with him just to save

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Speaker 3: his own life.

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Speaker 1: Well, in fact, that's really a pressing point because, as

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Speaker 1: one of the contributors said in the documentary, you know

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Speaker 1: he was a child. It was a choiceless choice. I mean,

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Speaker 1: what would you arrive done based for the choice of

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Speaker 1: being killed or joining a battalion that was killing people left,

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Speaker 1: right and center.

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Speaker 2: What a story and the story. Yeah, and I know

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Speaker 2: that his nephew wrote a book, so you've come up

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Speaker 2: against his family as well.

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Speaker 1: I imagine his son, who's now deceieft wrote the book.

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Speaker 1: His nephew not by blood, but the Foster family, his

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Speaker 1: Latbean nephew challenged the book and claimed that the book

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Speaker 1: was full of baseless allegations and defamed his family, the

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Speaker 1: Latvian family who adopted them, by claiming that they were

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Speaker 1: a Nazi family, which he maintains to warn and so

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Speaker 1: there was a dossier that he compiled of all the

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Speaker 1: allegations of defamation in the book. He asked Penguin to

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Speaker 1: help the book Penguin refused, There's just been endless controversy

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Speaker 1: surrounding the story, and in the end, you know, I

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Speaker 1: went to Melbourne from Sydney to interview him because, you know,

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Speaker 1: such a controversial story and I wanted to hear it

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Speaker 1: from him himself. And he denied the claims from day one.

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Speaker 1: He stuck to the story. From day one. He said

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Speaker 1: he will prove everyone wrong. And then out of the blue,

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Speaker 1: after ten years of silence, he called me and he said,

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Speaker 1: don I've proved them wrong and I want you to

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Speaker 1: tell my story.

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Speaker 2: And I'm sure you don't want to tell us the ending.

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Speaker 2: But is there a resolution?

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Speaker 1: There is a not just a resolution, there is a

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Speaker 1: revelation o the end with a blistering sting in the tail.

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Speaker 1: So stay tuned to the end of the show.

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Speaker 3: So, wow, you had me a blistering sting, Jan, it's

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Speaker 3: great to talk to you. Watch Hitler's Jewish Soldier tonight

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Speaker 3: from eight forty on SBS and SBS on demand.

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Speaker 1: Dan Goldberg, thank you, Thank you guys,