Two magnificent survivors and a miracle

One of the most impactful interviews I had the chance to do in 2024 was with Holocaust survivor Maxwell Smart.

The testimony of this 94-year-old Montreal artist who, as a child, had to hide in the woods to escape the Nazis touched my heart, just as it touched many readers. A powerful reminder that the first victims of the wars waged by adults are children.¹.

What I hadn’t suspected was that this interview would be just as significant for Maxwell Smart himself.

“Rima, what your article did for me is a miracle! »

On June 22, the day the interview was published, I received dozens of messages from readers who wanted to tell Maxwell Smart how inspiring they found him. Among the messages received, there was one from Michelle Skamene.

“My father, Emil Skamene, former scientific director of the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center, Knight of the Order of Quebec (2005), was born in Buczacz in 1941. He is Jewish. In 1943, at the same time as Maxwell’s mother asked him to flee, my father’s mother entrusted him to a Nazi soldier with the promise of delivering him to his aunt in Prague. »

It turns out that Buczacz, a small town in Ukraine which was part of Poland at the time, is also the birthplace of Maxwell Smart. Its Jewish inhabitants were exterminated during the Second World War. Only a handful of them survived the horror. Among them, two adopted Montrealers: the artist Maxwell Smart and the D^r Emil Skamene, two magnificent survivors who had never met even though they were born in the same small town, shared an incredible destiny and lived just a few kilometers from each other.

“Would it please be possible for you to put them in contact? Michelle Skamene asked me. I think these men would have a lot to say to each other! »

They spoke one day in July, Maxwell Smart tells me. “Emil Skamene spoke to me about his life. I told him about mine. I was so happy to meet him,” he said, in an emotional voice.

Emil Skamene asked about the Maxwell Smart story. He said his was complicated. The kind of story that doesn’t tell very well over the phone…

They had planned to visit each other in August to talk more about it. I also hoped to be able to attend this meeting. Unfortunately, the health of D^r Skamene deteriorated rapidly during the summer. The meeting never took place. Emil Skamene passed away peacefully at his home on October 3, 2024, at the age of 83.

“It’s very sad. I felt so close to him. He had brought me home, in a way,” says Maxwell Smart.

Although he would have liked to continue the conversation with him, the artist consoles himself by thinking of how lucky he was to be able to at least speak to him before his death.

Isn’t that an incredible coincidence?

Emil Skamene was very happy to be able to exchange with his compatriot. And Maxwell Smart was very impressed by the career of the eminent scientist. The D^r Skamene told him bits of his story, which was the subject of a 2022 documentary called Identite ES (which is unfortunately not available in Quebec, but would benefit from being²).

“He was a great man from my small hometown. An accomplished man! »

Emil Skamene was only 18 months old when his parents, feeling that they would not escape death, entrusted him to a Nazi soldier who – he later learned – was himself Jewish. They asked him, in exchange for money, to take their son clandestinely to Prague, where little Emil’s aunt lived, who was married to a Christian.

“This soldier took my father when he was a baby,” says his daughter Michelle. He took it out of Buczacz putting it in his backpack, putting some tape on his mouth and giving him sleeping pills from time to time so that he doesn’t make noise and can get him out of Poland. He delivered it to my father’s aunt. She raised him like her son. »

It wasn’t until 1970, while living in Boston and completing his postdoctoral studies at Harvard University, that Emil Skamene learned of his origin story when he opened his mailbox. “He received a letter from the wife of the soldier who had saved him. »

His adoptive parents confirmed to him that the letter was true. He then understood that the soldier who had allowed him to escape death had not disappeared from his life.

“He remembered a man who was very present in their lives in Prague. He never really understood the connection. But he was there at graduation or when there were exploits to celebrate. »

And there were many exploits throughout the remarkable career of this brilliant and generous man, a specialist in immunogenetics, who chose to settle in Montreal with his family in 1970.³.

“He often said towards the end of his life that it was as if he wanted to prove to his biological parents, his adoptive parents and the soldier who saved his life that all the risks they took for him were worth it. was worth it,” Michelle Skamene told me.

This is how, like Maxwell Smart, who promised his mother to live for her by dreaming of a world at peace, Emil Skamene made his life a tribute to those who lost theirs.

1. Read the file “Holocaust survivor Maxwell Smart: “I promised my mother I would live””

2. Consult the film information Identite ES

3. Read the tribute to the D^r Emil Skamene du CUSM