Surviving With Wolves

One of the most extraordinary and poignant survival stories to come out of World War II; Misha was only six years old when her parents were taken away from their home in Belgium to Auschwitz. She was given a new name, a new home, and forced into a new religion. No one told her why her parents were no longer with her, only that they had gone East. So one day, equipped only with a tiny compass and a few provisions, she set out East to find them. Misha crossed Belgium, Germany and Poland on foot alone - until, close to starvation in a vast forest, she was adopted by a family of wolves. She ate and played with the wolf cubs, and was protected by their mother. Finally, at the end of the war, she found her way home to Belgium via the Ukraine, Romania and Italy. She never found her parents.

Misha Defonseca was born to a Jewish family in Brussels in 1934; when she returned to Belgium at the end of the war after her epic journey, she met her future husband. After they were married, they emigrated to the United States; she now lives near Boston, close to a wolf sanctuary, and visits her friends the wolves every day.