The boy who hid from Nazis in the woods, part 1

Lives Less Ordinary

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.6 • 814 Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Maxwell Smart survived the Holocaust by living in a makeshift bunker on the forest floor.

Maxwell Smart was just 11 years old in 1941 when the Nazis took over his town in eastern Poland. One by one his Jewish family were disappeared or killed, but his mother implored him to run for his life just as she and his sister were being loaded onto a German truck. Using his extraordinary ingenuity he managed to survive in remote woodland for the rest of the war, mostly alone, sleeping in improvised shelters and foraging for food. He eventually met another orphaned Jewish boy in the woods, Janek, whose friendship would come to have a profound impact on Maxwell’s life.

A feature film based on Maxwell’s life has been released, it’s called The Boy in the Woods.

Presenter: Emily Webb Producers: Edgar Maddicott and Rebecca Vincent Editor: Munazza Khan

Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp: 0044 330 678 2784

Transcript

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0:00.0	On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.
0:06.9	It was an extraordinary news story.
0:09.1	The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,
0:13.7	mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.
0:18.0	One of the great mysteries in English criminal history.
0:20.7	We're still looking for Lucan.
0:22.1	It's honestly one of the most powerful
0:23.7	stories of my lifetime.
0:25.9	I'm Alex von Tundselman.
0:27.3	This is The Lucan Obsession.
0:29.2	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:34.6	They opened the doors
0:36.3	and they started to yell, out, out.
0:40.3	It was a mess outside.
0:43.0	They were yelling, throwing people in trucks.
0:47.1	And she pushes me away.
0:48.9	He says, you have to run away.
0:52.4	You have to live.
0:56.0	But where am I going to go?
0:59.0	You have to help yourself.
1:01.0	I cannot help you anymore.
1:05.0	This stayed with me for 80 years.
	...

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