I suppose one of the reasons people believed this story is that astounding things did happen during the war. Young people and children did escape and walk for hundreds of miles. My late friend Victor Zorza was still a schoolboy when the Nazis invaded. He left his family and walked from Poland far into Russia, and eventually made his way to England. (His family was killed.)

There are so many real stories like that, a fake one seems plausible.

Also, the business of meeting with wolves is not as strange as it sounds. Many wild animals were pushed out of their habitats by the advancing armies. Predators and scavenger species were often seen on battlefields and in destroyed cities and towns.