DALLAS — The WFAA documentary ‘Let Us Die’ was honored with two journalism awards recently from RTDNA and the Headliner’s Foundation.
‘Let Us Die’ won the Silver Award for Storytelling last month from the Headliner’s Foundation in Austin.
In May, the documentary also won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association.
‘Let Us Die’ details the ghastly decision by 13-year-old Ursula Weiss to die by suicide rather than let soldiers rape her again in the closing days of World War II.
In heartbreaking detail, the documentary shares the intimate final moments of Ursula and her parents in Neustrelitz, Germany on May 1, 1945. The family's last conversation, preserved word-for-word in a cache of letters, hauntingly recounts Ursula begging her father to enact their suicide pact before Soviet soldiers could return to sexually abuse her again.
The fragile letters were discovered hidden inside a secret compartment of an old desk that Tim Mallad purchased at an estate sale for $25.
Mallad spent years researching the Weiss family. Then, with support from the Hollywood actress Jane Seymour who Tim met in a random encounter, he eventually finds Frank Pringham, the last surviving relative of the Weiss. Pringham was a retired advertising executive living in Atlanta and never knew of this branch in his family tree.
The documentary follows Mallad and Pringham as they return to Germany to retrace what happened to the Weiss’ more than 70 years ago. Together, they find the Weiss’ home where the rapes happened and the mass grave where the family was buried.
Tragically, ‘Let Us Die’ discovers that Ursula’s story was not isolated. In Neustrelitz alone, more than 700 townspeople took their own lives during the final week of the war as Soviet soldiers, looking for revenge, raped women and children like her.
Unfortunately, the same sexual terror has been reported during the Israel – Hamas war. And the world has read with horror of similar war atrocities by Russian soldiers brutalizing women and girls in Ukraine.
But most people alive today know nothing about war crimes committed decades ago by an older generation of Russian soldiers. Official history never recorded what they did in 1945.
WFAA’s Jason Whitely and photojournalist Taylor Lumsden produced ‘Let Us Die’ over several years.
The documentary’s title is among Ursula’s last words. According to the letters, written by a refugee sheltering with the Weiss’, Ursula “begged her father ‘let us die.’ The father did ask, ‘Do you really mean it Ulla?’ ‘Yes, daddy. Hurry up before they return.’”
'Let Us Die' is one of the last untold stories of World War II. The documentary streams at WFAA+ and can be watched on WFAA's YouTube channel.
