After her Jewish parents were rounded up by the Nazis, Misha Defonseca set off on an epic journey to the East to find them. In a remarkable autobiography, she tells how wolves helped her survive. Sarah Foster heard her story.

THE little girl was slumped beside a tree, her body wracked with pain from the stone that had hit her back. As she lay howling, expressing her pent-up agony, she became aware of a presence. "I thought at first it was a big dog with long legs and a tapering muzzle. It was thin with magnificent eyes; it stood there motionless, looking at me. I didn't sense any danger. It was just watching me," she recalls.

This was Misha Defonseca's first encounter with a wolf - an encounter which, although she couldn't have known it then, was to change her life. She was in Poland, where she had just been chased by a man from whom she had stolen food. He had damaged her back with the stone he had thrown, but this was not the worst she would endure on her journey to the East.

Misha, then known as 'Mishke', was born to Jewish parents and lived her early childhood in the Belgian capital of Brussels. War was raging in Europe, with Jews a prime target, so "as a precaution" she was more or less confined to the house. She developed a strong bond with her mother, and loved to sleep beside her, enveloped by her lily of the valley-scented hair. She also forged a deep connection with animals, who became her imaginary playmates.

'Animals were my real clan, even though I had seen them only in pictures. A hen scratched about with her chicks, a bitch slept with her puppies and I slept with Maman. I was an animal like them," says Misha. "The idea of a 'wild' animal never crossed my mind. I was more inclined to believe that men were 'wild, German and wicked'."

But her safe world was spilt apart when one day a woman in black, instead of her father, came to collect her from school. Without explanation, she was taken to a stranger's house and given a new identity.

Her guardian was cruel and spiteful, and her only source of comfort was the farm where the woman's relatives, Grandpere and Marthe, lived. Grandpere taught her many things, explaining where the East was and giving her the gift of a compass. When it became too dangerous for her to visit, Misha was heartbroken, so with a few meagre provisions, and only her compass to guide her, the seven-year-old began walking to find her parents.

"I had to disappear into the forest, be on my guard against all types of danger and consequently not speak to anyone, because people couldn't be trusted. But I had faith that my toughness and my physical strength, as well as my compass, would enable me to find my parents. It was a fixation, an obsession," she says.

And so began the incredible four-year journey that would several times come close to killing her. Travelling through Belgium and Germany, Misha quickly ran out of food. Her feet, stripped of skin, developed a hide-like coating and her toes became like claws. By the time she reached Poland she was no longer a little girl but a wild animal, her only instinct to survive. When a she-wolf responded to her cries of pain, she embraced her as a substitute mother.

"I called the wolf Maman Rita after Grandpere's bitch," Misha recalls. "She followed me, walking nimbly on beautiful slender legs, and I spoke to her softly. I just wanted her to stay with me. I didn't want to be alone any more. Falling asleep was a pleasure with that warmth along my back."

But her happiness was short-lived. Maman Rita was gunned down by a German hunter and she saw the body of her beloved wolf slumped over his shoulder. In a blind rage, she followed him to his cottage and hit him with an iron bar. She clung to Maman Rita's body through the night, sobbing uncontrollably.

As she struggled on, the thought of her mother keeping her going, Misha encountered the war in all its brutality. On one occasion, she slipped through a hole in the wall of a Polish ghetto, hoping to find her parents there. The sights of a pregnant woman being shot and bodies being hurled from windows have left her scarred.

"I saw it with my own eyes. It's not something I can ever forget. It's as if it has been branded on to my memory: the noise of boots, the light, the screams, the falling body, then jostling and gunfire. I was both fascinated and terrified by the noise of the rifles and the sight of all those bodies suddenly collapsing, apparently at random," she says.

Later on, she saw a line of children falling like skittles, their skulls pierced with bullets, and, hiding behind a bush, she watched a young girl being raped by a German. A noise distracted him and, armed with a revolver, he came towards Misha's hiding place. Relying on her now-honed animal instincts, she waited until she felt his breath before plunging a knife into his stomach.

Crushed by the weight of human cruelty, she turned to wolves once more. Playing with the pups of a large pack, she felt like one of them, released from loneliness and pain. But unlike them, she couldn't go for days without food, so when she saw a she-wolf regurgitate for her offspring, she thought only of staying alive. "I crawled on all fours, as the pups did. I uttered little cries as they did. I persisted, and suddenly, she regurgitated in front of me. I fell upon it; it was warm. She was feeding me! I was her pup just like the others," says Misha, who claims that anyone who baulks at this has never been truly hungry.

Not finding her parents in the Ukraine, she decided her only option was to turn back. Pushed beyond most adults' endurance, tortured by the horrors she had seen, she staggered home to Brussels, where she no longer felt she belonged. In the care of two Catholic spinsters she felt stifled, as if her true animal nature had been repressed. It took her years to readjust, and even now, she has a deep mistrust of people.

At 71, living in the US and happily married with a son, Misha can finally rest. She still bears the scars - physical and emotional - of her childhood, and never found her parents, but surrounded by her animals, she's at peace. When she looks back on what she endured, a little girl with amazing guts, she feels blessed. "It's like I have a God on my shoulder. I think it's probably my parents and Grandpere and Marthe watching over me," she says.

* Surviving With Wolves by Misha Defonseca (Portrait, £17.99).