Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years
Encyclopedia
Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years is a book by Misha Defonseca
, first published in 1997. The book was originally claimed to be a memoir
telling the true story of how the author survived The Holocaust
as a young Jewish girl, wandering Europe searching for her deported parents. The book sold well in several countries and was made into a movie, Survivre Avec les Loups (Surviving with the Wolves), named after the claim that Misha was adopted by a pack of wolves during her journey who protected her.
However, in February 2008, Defonseca publicly admitted what many had already suspected, that her memoir was false. Her real name was Monique de Wael; while her parents were in fact taken away by the Nazis, they were not Jews but Catholic
members of the Belgian Resistance
, and she did not leave her home during the war to find them, as the book depicts. In a statement released through her lawyers to the Brussels
newspaper Le Soir
Defonseca/de Wael said that the story of "Misha" "is not actual reality, but was my reality, my way of surviving" and that there were moments when she "found it difficult to differentiate between what was real and what was part of my imagination."
Monique de Wael was born in 1937 in Etterbeek
, Belgium
to Robert De Wael and Josephine Donvil. The exact date is given differently by different sources: May 12 (according to a baptism
al record) or September 2 (according to records from the school Monique attended in the year 1943-44.) Her family was not Jewish but Catholic
, and her parents were members of the Belgian resistance
, which led to them being arrested by the Nazis on September 23, 1941. Nazi records indicate that Robert de Wael was executed on May 3 or 4 of 1944, and Donvil died sometime between February 1 and December 31 of 1945.
According to de Wael's February 2008 statement, her guardianship went first to her grandfather Ernest de Wael, and then to her uncle Maurice de Wael. De Wael says that other than her grandfather, those who took her in treated her badly, including calling her "the traitor's daughter" because her father was suspected of having given information under torture in St. Gilles prison. She remained with her uncle's family, and did not go off in search of her missing parents as "Misha" did, but according to her statement, this time with her uncle's family was when she began to "feel Jewish" and to fantasize about going off with the wolves.
in the United States
under the name of "Misha Defonseca". She was telling the fictional story of Misha to people as her own real life, including presenting it to the congregation of a Holliston
synagogue
on Holocaust Memorial Day
as her own experience of the Holocaust.
The fictional "Misha" is eight when her parents were taken away (unlike de Wael, who was four). Before their deportation, her parents place her with a Catholic family, who give her the pseudonym "Monique de Wael" (the author's real name). When this family treats her cruelly, Misha goes off in search of her parents, walking through Europe and living by stealing food, clothing and shoes.
At a time when she faces starvation in a forest, she is adopted by wolves, becoming a feral child
. Protected by the pack, she survives by eating offal
and worms. All in all, she treks over 1,900 miles through Europe, from Belgium to the Ukraine
, through the Balkans
and Germany and Poland (where she sneaks in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto), to Italy by boat and back to Belgium through France. Before the war is over, Misha has taken human life to survive, stabbing to death with a pocket knife a rapist German Nazi soldier who attacks her.
When Jane Daniel, the owner of a small publishing company, Mt. Ivy Press, heard of Misha's dramatic and supposedly true story, she signed Defonseca to write a memoir of her experiences, with Vera Lee, a friend of Daniel's, as co-writer. The book was published in April 1997, and sold only around 5,000 copies in the United States, but was optioned for a film by The Walt Disney Company
. Disney declined to make the film, however, in part because of legal difficulties: by 1998, Defonseca and Lee had brought a lawsuit against Daniel, alleging that Daniel had failed to market the book properly in the US and had failed to give the co-authors their proper share of overseas royalties. In 2001 a jury awarded Defonseca and Lee over $10 million; a judge's decision later tripled the amount to over $32 million; Daniel was ordered to pay Defonseca $22.5 million and Lee $11 million. The rights to the book were also awarded to Defonseca.
The European print and film rights were separate from Defonseca's contract with Daniel and Mt. Ivy Press. The book became a bestseller in France, selling over 30,000 copies, and Defonseca toured France to promote it; in Italy the book sold even better, selling over 37,000 copies. French film rights were sold to French Jewish filmmaker Véra Belmont
and the resulting movie, Survivre avec des loups, opened in Belgium in late 2007.
for Criticism, for his book Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory) consulted Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg
, who also thought the story impossible. A third, Bette Greene
, asked for her blurb to be removed because she found the book unbelievable. As early as 1996, questions of authenticity were being aired publicly, for instance by Henryk M. Broder in Der Spiegel
: "Fälschung oder nicht Fälschung, das ist hier die Frage. Bis auf den "Kompaß" liegt kein sachlicher Beweis vor. Und alle Zeugen, die Mishas Geschichte bestätigen könnten, sind entweder tot oder verschwunden." ("Falsehood or not a falsehood, that is the question here. Aside from no objective proof exists. And all witnesses who could confirm Misha's story are either dead or disappeared.")
Even Defonseca's co-author Lee had doubts, leading her to consult Facing History and Ourselves
, a nonprofit educational organization which helps to guide how the Holocaust is studied in schools. According to Lee, when the organization's representative told her that the story she was describing was impossible, she tried to bring her concerns to Daniel, only to be rebuffed. When she was told that Defonseca had burned diaries from her teens in which she had written down her story, because the French version of her book had told her story so completely, Lee was surprised because she had never been told of the existence of these diaries, much less been given access to them to assist in writing the book. Nevertheless, Lee would profess surprise in 2008 when Defonseca confessed that she was not Jewish and the childhood she described in Misha was made up, saying that no research she did had led her to think the story was anything but true.
As the publisher of the book, Daniel had made many public statements which addressed the issue of whether Defonseca's memoir was truthful. One of these public statements came in 1999, and was prompted by the public controversy that occurred when Binjamin Wilkomirski
's alleged Holocaust memoir Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood 1939-1948 was shown to be a fraud. Daniel wrote "Is Misha's story fact or invention? Without hard evidence one way or the other, questions will always remain... It is left to the reader to decide." Later, after the first jury award, Daniel would say "I have no idea whether is true or not. My experience is that all Holocaust stories are far-fetched. All survivor stories are miracles." By 2007, however, Daniel was trying to actively debunk the story of Misha in hopes that it would provide a way to challenge the judgement against her. In August 2007, Daniel began a blog
titled "Best-Seller", telling the story of how the book came to be published, and attracted attention from Sharon Sergeant
, a genealogist. Using clues from the various versions of the manuscript, including the "pseudonym" of Monique de Wael, Sergeant turned up documents from the life of Monique de Wael, such as a baptismal record and a school register showing de Wael enrolled in elementary school in 1943 when "Misha" was supposed to be wandering through Europe. After Daniel published these documents on the blog in late February 2008, the Belgian newspaper Le Soir
took up the controversy, unearthing and publishing more detail on de Wael's parents. Within a week, Defonseca had acknowledged that Monique de Wael was her real name and that the life of "Misha" was a fantasy.
Misha Defonseca
Misha Defonseca , born as Monique de Wael, is a Belgian writer and the author of Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years, first published in 1997 and at that time professed to be a memoir. It became an instant success in Europe and was translated into 18 languages...
, first published in 1997. The book was originally claimed to be a memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
telling the true story of how the author survived The Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
as a young Jewish girl, wandering Europe searching for her deported parents. The book sold well in several countries and was made into a movie, Survivre Avec les Loups (Surviving with the Wolves), named after the claim that Misha was adopted by a pack of wolves during her journey who protected her.
However, in February 2008, Defonseca publicly admitted what many had already suspected, that her memoir was false. Her real name was Monique de Wael; while her parents were in fact taken away by the Nazis, they were not Jews but Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
members of the Belgian Resistance
Belgian resistance
Belgian resistance during World War II to the occupation of Belgium by Nazi Germany took different forms. "The Belgian Resistance" was the common name for the Netwerk van de weerstand - Réseau de Résistance or Resistance Network , a group of partisans fighting the Nazis...
, and she did not leave her home during the war to find them, as the book depicts. In a statement released through her lawyers to the Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
newspaper Le Soir
Le Soir
Le Soir is a Berliner Format Belgian newspaper. Le Soir was founded in 1887 by Emile Rossel. It is the most popular Francophone newspaper in Belgium, and considered a newspaper of record.-Editorial stance:...
Defonseca/de Wael said that the story of "Misha" "is not actual reality, but was my reality, my way of surviving" and that there were moments when she "found it difficult to differentiate between what was real and what was part of my imagination."
The true Monique de Wael
It is difficult to be sure of de Wael's true history, since it was obscured for so long behind the false story de Wael told. However, at least a fragmentary version can be put together from documentation turned up by researchers and from de Wael's own admissions.Monique de Wael was born in 1937 in Etterbeek
Etterbeek
Etterbeek is one of the nineteen municipalities located in the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium. It neighbours the municipalities of the City of Brussels, Ixelles, Auderghem, Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, Woluwe-Saint-Lambert and Schaerbeek....
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
to Robert De Wael and Josephine Donvil. The exact date is given differently by different sources: May 12 (according to a baptism
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
al record) or September 2 (according to records from the school Monique attended in the year 1943-44.) Her family was not Jewish but Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
, and her parents were members of the Belgian resistance
Belgian resistance
Belgian resistance during World War II to the occupation of Belgium by Nazi Germany took different forms. "The Belgian Resistance" was the common name for the Netwerk van de weerstand - Réseau de Résistance or Resistance Network , a group of partisans fighting the Nazis...
, which led to them being arrested by the Nazis on September 23, 1941. Nazi records indicate that Robert de Wael was executed on May 3 or 4 of 1944, and Donvil died sometime between February 1 and December 31 of 1945.
According to de Wael's February 2008 statement, her guardianship went first to her grandfather Ernest de Wael, and then to her uncle Maurice de Wael. De Wael says that other than her grandfather, those who took her in treated her badly, including calling her "the traitor's daughter" because her father was suspected of having given information under torture in St. Gilles prison. She remained with her uncle's family, and did not go off in search of her missing parents as "Misha" did, but according to her statement, this time with her uncle's family was when she began to "feel Jewish" and to fantasize about going off with the wolves.
The book
By the late 1980s, de Wael was living in MassachusettsMassachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
under the name of "Misha Defonseca". She was telling the fictional story of Misha to people as her own real life, including presenting it to the congregation of a Holliston
Holliston, Massachusetts
Holliston is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States in the Greater Boston area. The population was 13,547 at the 2010 census. It is part of the region known as MetroWest. Holliston is the only town in Middlesex County that borders both Norfolk and Worcester...
synagogue
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
on Holocaust Memorial Day
Holocaust Memorial Day
Holocaust Memorial Day or Holocaust Remembrance Day may refer to one of several commemorations of the Holocaust.-See also:* United Nations Holocaust Memorial* List of Holocaust memorials and museums...
as her own experience of the Holocaust.
The fictional "Misha" is eight when her parents were taken away (unlike de Wael, who was four). Before their deportation, her parents place her with a Catholic family, who give her the pseudonym "Monique de Wael" (the author's real name). When this family treats her cruelly, Misha goes off in search of her parents, walking through Europe and living by stealing food, clothing and shoes.
At a time when she faces starvation in a forest, she is adopted by wolves, becoming a feral child
Feral child
A feral child is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language...
. Protected by the pack, she survives by eating offal
Offal
Offal , also called, especially in the United States, variety meats or organ meats, refers to the internal organs and entrails of a butchered animal. The word does not refer to a particular list of edible organs, which varies by culture and region, but includes most internal organs other than...
and worms. All in all, she treks over 1,900 miles through Europe, from Belgium to the Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, through the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
and Germany and Poland (where she sneaks in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto), to Italy by boat and back to Belgium through France. Before the war is over, Misha has taken human life to survive, stabbing to death with a pocket knife a rapist German Nazi soldier who attacks her.
When Jane Daniel, the owner of a small publishing company, Mt. Ivy Press, heard of Misha's dramatic and supposedly true story, she signed Defonseca to write a memoir of her experiences, with Vera Lee, a friend of Daniel's, as co-writer. The book was published in April 1997, and sold only around 5,000 copies in the United States, but was optioned for a film by The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
. Disney declined to make the film, however, in part because of legal difficulties: by 1998, Defonseca and Lee had brought a lawsuit against Daniel, alleging that Daniel had failed to market the book properly in the US and had failed to give the co-authors their proper share of overseas royalties. In 2001 a jury awarded Defonseca and Lee over $10 million; a judge's decision later tripled the amount to over $32 million; Daniel was ordered to pay Defonseca $22.5 million and Lee $11 million. The rights to the book were also awarded to Defonseca.
The European print and film rights were separate from Defonseca's contract with Daniel and Mt. Ivy Press. The book became a bestseller in France, selling over 30,000 copies, and Defonseca toured France to promote it; in Italy the book sold even better, selling over 37,000 copies. French film rights were sold to French Jewish filmmaker Véra Belmont
Véra Belmont
Véra Belmont is a French film producer, director and screenwriter. She has produced over 40 films since 1960. Her 1985 film Red Kiss was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival, where Charlotte Valandrey won the Silver Bear for Best Actress.-Selected filmography:* The Cop * Quest...
and the resulting movie, Survivre avec des loups, opened in Belgium in late 2007.
Exposure
Doubts about the truthfulness of the book surfaced early on, even before the book was published. At least two people who were asked by the publisher to contribute blurbs for the book instead warned the publisher that the story was not true. One of them, Lawrence L. Langer (a 1991 winner of the National Book Critics Circle AwardNational Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
for Criticism, for his book Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory) consulted Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...
, who also thought the story impossible. A third, Bette Greene
Bette Greene
Bette Greene is the author of several books for children and young adults, including Summer of My German Soldier, The Drowning of Stephan Jones, and the Newbery Honor book Philip Hall Likes Me, I Reckon Maybe...
, asked for her blurb to be removed because she found the book unbelievable. As early as 1996, questions of authenticity were being aired publicly, for instance by Henryk M. Broder in Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
: "Fälschung oder nicht Fälschung, das ist hier die Frage. Bis auf den "Kompaß" liegt kein sachlicher Beweis vor. Und alle Zeugen, die Mishas Geschichte bestätigen könnten, sind entweder tot oder verschwunden." ("Falsehood or not a falsehood, that is the question here. Aside from no objective proof exists. And all witnesses who could confirm Misha's story are either dead or disappeared.")
Even Defonseca's co-author Lee had doubts, leading her to consult Facing History and Ourselves
Facing History and Ourselves
Facing History and Ourselves is an international organization that provides professional development services and curricular resources to educators. It was founded in 1976 by Margot Stern Strom and Bill Parsons...
, a nonprofit educational organization which helps to guide how the Holocaust is studied in schools. According to Lee, when the organization's representative told her that the story she was describing was impossible, she tried to bring her concerns to Daniel, only to be rebuffed. When she was told that Defonseca had burned diaries from her teens in which she had written down her story, because the French version of her book had told her story so completely, Lee was surprised because she had never been told of the existence of these diaries, much less been given access to them to assist in writing the book. Nevertheless, Lee would profess surprise in 2008 when Defonseca confessed that she was not Jewish and the childhood she described in Misha was made up, saying that no research she did had led her to think the story was anything but true.
As the publisher of the book, Daniel had made many public statements which addressed the issue of whether Defonseca's memoir was truthful. One of these public statements came in 1999, and was prompted by the public controversy that occurred when Binjamin Wilkomirski
Binjamin Wilkomirski
Binjamin Wilkomirski was a name which Bruno Dössekker adopted in his constructed identity as a Holocaust survivor and published author...
's alleged Holocaust memoir Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood 1939-1948 was shown to be a fraud. Daniel wrote "Is Misha's story fact or invention? Without hard evidence one way or the other, questions will always remain... It is left to the reader to decide." Later, after the first jury award, Daniel would say "I have no idea whether is true or not. My experience is that all Holocaust stories are far-fetched. All survivor stories are miracles." By 2007, however, Daniel was trying to actively debunk the story of Misha in hopes that it would provide a way to challenge the judgement against her. In August 2007, Daniel began a blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
titled "Best-Seller", telling the story of how the book came to be published, and attracted attention from Sharon Sergeant
Sharon Sergeant
Sharon Sergeant is a forensic genealogist who specialises in researching and tracing international fraud cases, property settlements, and provenance of artifact collections. Her expertise involves biographical research for historians, publishers, authors, and journalists. She attended Northeastern...
, a genealogist. Using clues from the various versions of the manuscript, including the "pseudonym" of Monique de Wael, Sergeant turned up documents from the life of Monique de Wael, such as a baptismal record and a school register showing de Wael enrolled in elementary school in 1943 when "Misha" was supposed to be wandering through Europe. After Daniel published these documents on the blog in late February 2008, the Belgian newspaper Le Soir
Le Soir
Le Soir is a Berliner Format Belgian newspaper. Le Soir was founded in 1887 by Emile Rossel. It is the most popular Francophone newspaper in Belgium, and considered a newspaper of record.-Editorial stance:...
took up the controversy, unearthing and publishing more detail on de Wael's parents. Within a week, Defonseca had acknowledged that Monique de Wael was her real name and that the life of "Misha" was a fantasy.
External links
- Defonseca's statement to Le Soir
- "Writer admits Holocaust book is not true", Boston Globe, February 29, 2008.
- Eskin, Blake. "Crying Wolf: Why did it take so long for a far-fetched Holocaust memoir to be debunked?", Slate.com, February 29, 2008.
- Belgian Writer Admits Best-Selling Holocaust 'Memoir' a Hoax
- Holocaust wolf memoir a fake, author admits
- Author: My best-selling Holocaust book is a hoax
- Untrue Stories, article & video on how Holocaust memoir hoaxes are busted
- Jane Daniel on NPR's Here and Now http://www.here-now.org/shows/2008/03/20080304.asp
- http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6549698.html Misha' Publisher Files to Overturn $33 Million Judgment