A 12-year-old Jewish boy was forced to hide for almost two years in a forest to avoid being captured and ultimately murdered by the Nazis who had occupied his village in Poland.

Following the outbreak of World War II, the village of Buczacz (now called Buchach) and located in western Ukraine) was occupied by Soviet troops as part of a secret agreement between Hitler and Stalin to divide Poland.

A few weeks after German troops invaded western and northern Poland in September 1939, Soviet troops invaded the country from the east.

But then Germany launched its offensive against the Soviet Union, and in 1941, the village of Buczacz was occupied by Nazi troops—and tanks—who began hunting down, arresting, and murdering the Jews who lived there.

The day the village's Jews were loaded onto a truck to be deported to a concentration and extermination camp, young Oziac Fromm was forced to flee to survive.

Oziac Fromm was born in 1930 to a Czech mother and a Polish father. As a child, the family moved from what was then Czechoslovakia to Buczacz, a town in Poland that is now part of Ukraine. Today, the few fond memories Maxwell has of that decade are from his childhood and family life. "The house was lit by candles; we didn't have electricity," Maxwell told the BBC's Outlook program. "There was always a silver candelabra on the white table. Every Friday, my mother, my father, my grandfather, and my grandmother would have dinner together. They were unforgettable evenings. The food was excellent. My mother was a very good cook." The home was characterized by a clear division of labor: the mother was the one who gave affection, the father was the one who set the standards. "He only wanted to know one thing: 'How are you doing in school?' He didn't play with me because he was so busy. My mother was the cook, the organizer, the one who taught me to read, the one who helped me with my schoolwork. And she loved me. I was mortified by all the kisses she gave me in front of other children.The city was initially occupied by Soviet forces, but the family did not feel threatened. But in July 1941, it was taken by the Nazis.

According to Oziac, Soviet forces offered the family safe passage to escape the advancing Germans, but his mother, who led the family, refused the offer.

“She said, 'I can't leave the house. The Russians were here for two years and nothing drastic happened. What could happen now?' That was the worst decision my mother ever made, and it cost the lives of 62 members of my family. I remember that maybe two days later, the Germans arrived, and everything changed.”

Three weeks after the Nazi occupation, the new government announced an appeal for all Jews between the ages of 18 and 50 to register at the police station. Hundreds of people turned up, including Oziac's father. These men were loaded onto trucks and taken away.

At that time, Buczacz was home to about 8,000 Jews. The families were told the men had been taken to Germany for work, but in reality, they were shot on the outskirts of the city. The Fromm family, like other Jewish families, was forced to move to a ghetto in a run-down part of the city. "There were four of us: my mother, my five-year-old sister, my grandfather, and me. We lived with four other people. Two families in one room," Oziac said. In November 1942, the Nazis began raiding houses in the ghetto in search of Jews to deport to concentration and extermination camps. One day, the Gestapo raided the house where his family and several other people were staying. "The screaming was unbearable. The children were crying. About 20 people were running down the stairs. The Gestapo agents entered our apartment and started throwing us out." My grandfather was sick and blind. They pushed him, he fell down the stairs and couldn't get up. Then, a policeman came down with a rifle and shot him, decapitating him in half. That scene has marked me forever. It was chaos. They were screaming, pushing people toward the trucks. I saw two policemen grabbing a baby by the feet and throwing it, like it was a bag of garbage, into a truck.”

His mother then pulled him aside and said, “You have to run because no one in our family is going to get out alive. You have to take care of yourself to survive, “I can't help you anymore.” And then she left with her daughter for the truck.”

“I got up, walked away, and hid in a corner. After a while, I got up, went outside, and didn't see anyone else. I walked to a bridge, and a German policeman stopped me there. He put a gun to my head and asked, 'Are you Jewish?' And I said, 'No.' Then he turned around and left."

Life in Hide

Oziac located an aunt who was hiding in a restaurant. She sent him to the home of a Polish farmer who lived in a village far from the city. The farmer's name was Jasko, and he lived with his wife, Kasia, and their two children.

“He had a small house, with one bedroom containing a straw bed, a living room, and a large stove. He told me to undress and gave me trousers and an embroidered shirt. I have changed my image from city boy to country boy. He started calling me 'Staszek.' He gave me a Polish name and told me that, from now on, I belonged to the family, that I was his nephew."

A few weeks later, the police knocked on Jasko's door looking for Jewish fugitives. "That day, I was helping Kasia prepare food for the animals. The police came in and told Jasko, 'We've been told you're hiding Jews.'" The boy's first thought was that it was all over. The policeman's message to his protector left no doubt about the seriousness of the moment: "Jasko, I want to tell you something. If you tell us where they are, we'll take them and leave. But if you don't tell us and we find them, we'll kill them. And we'll kill you and your family. What do you say, Jasko?” “I sat there waiting for him to say he was hiding a Jew. But Jasko said, 'I'm not hiding any Jews. Feel free to look around the house.' And they came into the living room. I moved away from the bench. They looked under the table. Under the bed. “They looked in the barn, in the stable… and they left.” They didn't find any Jews.”

But that was the end of his time in that house.

“Jasko told me, 'Staszek, you'll have to leave. I can't stay with you. 'Do you understand?' I said yes. 'Come,' he said, 'we'll find a place in the woods for you to stay.'”

With Jasko's help, they found a den, which they transformed into a small, straw-lined shelter. Jasko gave them some advice on what to eat and what not to eat, how to make a rabbit trap, and how to light a fire. And so, at the age of 12, Maxwell began to live alone, hidden in the woods.

As time passed, the boy began to feel increasingly disconnected from the world and adapted to his new surroundings.

“I didn't even seem human anymore. I ate with dirty hands, I didn't wash, I was an animal. And I looked up at the sky and felt free. The birds and the forest accepted me, they liked me. I was part of them.”

“I was very hungry, I would go days without eating. I ate mushrooms from the trees, because Jasko taught me that the mushrooms on the ground were poisonous. So I only looked for mushrooms on the trees and wild berries.”

Oziac began to understand and observe the sounds of the forest, which served as a kind of warning signal for the arrival of strangers.And one day…

“Suddenly, the forest went silent. I saw some animals running, and then, suddenly, I couldn't hear anything. Then I saw a boy, maybe two years younger than me. He was walking alone through the forest. He said he was hiding with his parents a few kilometers away. That his mother had gone to get food from a farmer and hadn't returned. Then his father went to get food and hadn't returned either. He said he hadn't eaten in two days, and I gave him some food. He ate it all. His name was Janek.”

The two began to live together, hidden in the forest. They enlarged the den, lined the walls with stone, and the floor had a roof, even a sort of small makeshift oven made with a pot and some charcoal that Oziac had saved. It was enough to keep them warm in winter.