Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #804764 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 250 pages

Customer Reviews

Oooops - IT'S A FAKE!!!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080229/ap_on_re_us/holocaust_book_hoax


Writer admits Holocaust book is not true

By MELISSA TRUJILLO, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 29, 5:12 PM ET

BOSTON - Almost nothing Misha Defonseca wrote about herself or her horrific childhood during the Holocaust was true.

She didn't live with a pack of wolves to escape the Nazis. She didn't trek 1,900 miles across Europe in search of her deported parents, nor kill a German soldier in self-defense. She's not even Jewish.

Defonseca, a Belgian writer now living in Massachusetts, admitted through her lawyers this week that her best-selling book, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," was an elaborate fantasy she kept repeating, even as the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.

"This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," Defonseca said in a statement given by her lawyers to The Associated Press.

"I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very lost," the statement said.

[...]

Follow the link for the full, sordid story.

AUTHOR CONFESSES HER STORY IS FAKE
This is a fascinating story. But it's not a true story. The author finally admitted that she made it all up. The truth is after the author's parents, non-Jewish resistance fighters in Belgium, were arrested in World War II, she moved in with some relatives who treated her as a traitor. This made her "feel Jewish" and she made up her story to feel better about herself. A shame, an insult and an affront to all those Jewish people who truly suffered. (But nonetheless quite a moneymaker for the author who, before her confession, got a judge to award her tens of millions of dollars from the publisher for unpaid profits from the book.)

Let's be serious for a moment here
Uplifting and entertaining though this story may be, it is impossible to tell how much of it is true. Let's face it, no-one has ever been brought up by wolves, beautiful idea though it is. I would love to believe that wolves would take care of children, bring them up and feed them, but they don't.

There aren't any properly documented examples of wolf-children. It is an urban myth. Most of the "examples" can be traced back to some carnival barker trying to sell tickets to see somebody like "Pogo, the dog-faced boy". Just because a 19th century carny hustler says that a kid was brought up by wolves doesn't make it true.

I'm afraid that Misha either has a faulty memory or is telling an untruth here.