At 10, I fled the Nazis to live starving and alone in the woods. For two years, detection meant death

Maxwell Smart lost his family in the Holocaust, but was saved by his mother’s instruction to run. It was seven decades before he told anyone what had happened

Maxwell Smart still feels at his safest when it rains. The 93-year-old first learned this as a boy of 10, alone in a forest, lying on a bed of leaves in a makeshift bunker, waiting out the Nazi occupation of Poland. For two years he hid in the forest, evading hunters. Detection meant likely death.

“It was a sport to kill a Jew,” he says. “[Your typical Nazi] is not going to go in the mud and get dirty and filthy; he is doing it for happiness, for enjoyment. So when it was raining, I knew I was safe.”

Continue reading… Maxwell Smart lost his family in the Holocaust, but was saved by his mother’s instruction to run. It was seven decades before he told anyone what had happenedMaxwell Smart still feels at his safest when it rains. The 93-year-old first learned this as a boy of 10, alone in a forest, lying on a bed of leaves in a makeshift bunker, waiting out the Nazi occupation of Poland. For two years he hid in the forest, evading hunters. Detection meant likely death.“It was a sport to kill a Jew,” he says. “[Your typical Nazi] is not going to go in the mud and get dirty and filthy; he is doing it for happiness, for enjoyment. So when it was raining, I knew I was safe.” Continue reading… Life and style, Holocaust, Second world war 

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