Maxwell Smart was just nine when the war began. The boy from the Ukrainian town of Buczacz – then part of Poland – had his life turned upside down in 1939.
His story, and those of two other Canadian Holocaust survivors – Rose Lipsyzc and Helen Yermus- who are haunted by unanswered questions from their time as children during the war, is being told in a new documentary, Cheating Hitler.
Working with researchers, the filmmakers follow the survivors as they travel back to old hometowns, to killing sites, and to hiding places from the war as they seek out answers.
For Mr Smart, the experience includes meeting the extended family of a young companion who helped him survive in Nazi-occupied Poland.
The Germans occupied his part of Poland in 1941. His father was killed within three months and the rest of the family was rounded up into a ghetto.
In 1943, he, along with his mother and sister, were being loaded onto trucks during the clearing of their ghetto. He fled on his mother’s urging and never saw them again.
By age 13, he was living alone in the woods of Eastern Europe, hiding from groups of Ukrainians and Nazis searching for Jews.
He had dug himself a shelter in the dirt and was almost starving. After months alone, he came across another boy – Janek – walking in the woods in ragged clothing, and they became companions in survival.
Janek, who was a couple of years his junior, became a godsend who helped ease his loneliness.
