BOOKIT

The deal

Heathcliff Productions options Mark Kurzem’s “The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood,” the story of an elderly man who lived with the torment of a long-buried past and set out to discover the truth.

The players

Dominick Boutonnat (“Jacquou le Croquant”) producing; Kurzem represented on literary rights by Robert Guinsler at Sterling Lord Literistic and on film rights by Sarah Self with the Gersh Agency in Los Angeles. The book is published by Viking.

The back story

Mark Kurzem, an Oxford research student, got the shock of his life when his elderly father paid him a surprise visit in 1997. The man who told his family that he had been raised by Latvians after his Russian parents died during World War II revealed that he was, in fact, a Jew. Alex Kurzem saw his family murdered by Nazis when he was 5, and he survived only because an SS officer took pity on him. He traveled with the soldiers, witnessed unspeakable atrocities and wore a mini-Nazi uniform, a mascot to his murderous protectors.

Mark Kurzem was stunned but also intrigued, because his father remembered only bits of his past. The two set out to rediscover it, and the son penned “The Mascot,” a highly praised account of their odyssey. There was instant film interest: “We had competing bids from Hollywood, but the strongest push came from Europe, from the French filmmakers at Heathcliff Productions,” Self said. “Maybe it’s indicative of how the landscape is changing. There are a lot of new sources of financing out there.”

Kurzem said he wasn’t surprised because “the French are still very close to history and the Holocaust. And I wrote this book in a cinematic way. It played out almost like a dream.” If a film is made, he added, it would be the third time this story has made the screen. Kurzem made a documentary about his dad several years ago for Australian TV, and his father made his own debut during the war: Fleeting seconds survive of a Nazi propaganda film featuring young playmates, including children of SS officers, frolicking on a beach. One of them is Alex, dressed in a Nazi uniform, wearing a blindfold, groping to find his way.

--

josh.getlin@latimes.com