Holocaust Memoir is a Big Fake

Posted on March 7, 2008

Another memoir turns out to be a big fake. This one was a bestselling autobiography of a young Jewish girl who was saved from the Nazis by wolves. The book, Misha, a Memoir of the Holocaust Years, by Misha Defonseca has also been made into a movie.

Defonseca's book told the story of a 7-year-old Belgian Jewish girl who journeys across Europe after her parents were arrested by the Nazis during World War Two. For much of the time she sleeps in forests, fed and protected by wolves, like Rudyard Kipling's character Mowgli in "The Jungle Book."
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Defonseca, who said her real name is Monique Dewael, was four years old when her father was arrested by the Nazis in Belgium and she was brought up by relatives.
But critics have said that, contrary to the account in her book, her family was not Jewish and her father was arrested as a member of the resistance. She said she was called "the daughter of the traitor" because her father was suspected of having talked under torture. "Apart from my grandfather, I hated the people who looked after me. They treated me badly, I always felt different," she told Le Figaro, adding that she had "always felt Jewish."

Misha says wolves became part of her fantasy to escape from her real life. She says, "And I mixed everything up. There are times when it is difficult for me to tell the difference between what was reality and what my interior universe was. I ask pardon of all those who feel betrayed."

She wasn't Jewish, she wasn't rescued by wolves and the Nazis were never after her. Her attorneys wrote in a French newspaper that it didn't matter that it wasn't true, that the book gave people hope, which is one of the most absurd defenses we've heard in awhile. The "raised by wolves" thing should have a been a big red flag to her editor, we're thinking.