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Crying WolfWhy did it take so long for a far-fetched Holocaust memoir to be debunked?

By Blake Eskin
Posted Friday, Feb. 29, 2008, at 6:32 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Most Defonseca doubters had focused on passages that were was logically or historically implausible, but Sergeant assumed the story was false and instead scoured the various versions of the text for clues to the author's real identity. The American edition mentions the name Monique De Wael; the U.K. edition includes a date of birth—May 12, 1937—and the fact that Misha's father worked at the town hall. Sergeant plugged these data points into genealogical databases and found researchers in Belgium to help look for information.

Last week, Daniel posted a baptismal certificate from a Brussels church for a Monique De Wael, born to Robert De Wael and Josephine Donvil on May 12, 1937. She also posted a register from an elementary school near the De Waels' home that shows Monique enrolled there in September 1943—two years after Misha claimed to have left Brussels. In the school register, Robert De Wael is identified as a municipal employee. The Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported these developments and added that Monique's parents—Catholic resisters—had been arrested, deported, and killed.

In the face of this mounting evidence, Defonseca confessed. In a statement released through a Brussels attorney, she tries to head off the questions that swirled around Bruno Doessekker: whether her alter ego was a delusion or a conscious scam for which she may bear legal liability. In her statement, Defonseca continues to paint herself as a victim:

My parents were arrested when I was four. I was taken in by my grandfather, Ernest De Wael, then by my uncle, Maurice De Wael. They called me "the traitor's daughter" because my father was suspected of talking under torture at St. Gilles Prison. Other than my grandfather, I hated those who took me in. They treated me badly.

Defonseca also claims she was the victim of her publisher. "At first, I didn't want to publish, and then I let myself be talked into it by Jane Daniel. She made me believe, and I believed it." Daniel may have persuaded Defonseca to publish Misha, but Rabbi Heiligman says that the core of Defonseca's story did not change since the first time she told her story, years before Defonseca met Daniel. And Daniel had no hand in the U.K. edition or Véra Belmont's film.

Defonseca is no innocent, but she could not have made Misha into an international phenomenon on her own. When the historian Debórah Dwork told Daniel that Misha was not authentic testimony, that didn't stop Daniel from publishing the book. Nor did these questions keep Véra Belmont from making her film and comparing those who dared question its authenticity to Holocaust deniers.

Since Defonseca came clean, Rabbi Heiligman told me, "I wish she had published it as fiction—it's a compelling story." And a spokesman for Belmont told the Boston Globe, "No matter if it's true or not—she believes it is, anyway—she just thinks it's a beautiful story." In her statement, Defonseca says,

I always felt different. It's true that, since forever, I felt Jewish and later in life could come to terms with myself by being welcomed by part of this community.

Defonseca has suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazis. But her empathy with Jewish suffering went too far, and "feeling Jewish" does not give her license for such narcissistic disregard for the suffering of actual Jews. For others to continue telling the story of Misha, especially now that she acknowledges it's a fable, is an affront to those authentic Holocaust survivors with sad but not otherworldly stories, to the memory of those who did not live to document their own fate, and to those who take the study of history seriously.

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Blake Eskin is the editor of The New Yorker's Web site. He is the author of A Life in Pieces: The Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski.
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Notes from the Fray Editor

Slate Readers never shy away from the difficult issues, and there are many good discussions in the Fray about Holocaust fakers, about the history of genocide, and about whether and when it is OK to ask questions. MaryAnn's post on Jerzy Kosinski started up a a good thread, and this post asked questions about another author. Steelbucket asked "But is it a good read?"

Comments from the Fray

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.

--JedRothwell

(To reply, click here)

There have been many examples of phoney memoirs published in the last few years. It seems that:

1. Publishers aren't asking enough questions.

2. Some writers want the greater publicity that their 'true story' gives them, rather than risking the obscurity of fiction writing.

3. Other writers have psychological problems and blend truth and fiction often, not just when they write.

4. Readers lap up true tales of suffering.

There needs to be some due diligence done before some of these memoirs are rushed into print. Readers have a right to expect non-fiction to be just that.

--Jeng13

(To reply, click here)

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