Misha Defonseca wrote a biography, Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years, laying out a story where her parents were captured and later killed by the Nazis when she was very young, that she wandered for four years between villages and the wilderness trying to find them, that she had to kill a German soldier in defense, and was even taken in by a pack of wolves. After critics and skeptics pressed her and her publishers, she finally came out with a statement, stating that the story is mostly a fabrication. 

She is not even Jewish, as it turns out.  She says her real name is Monique Da Wael, and while her parents were killed by the Nazis, it was because they were Belgian resistance fighters.  She says her grandfather and uncle took her in, but were apparently more sympathetic to the Nazis, and treated her poorly as a result.

The problem I'm having with this story is, do you feel bad for this woman, or do you view her with scorn?  What she did is certainly an insult to those who did die, lose loved ones or survived the Holocaust, she cashed in pretty big, the book was published in 18 languages, and there was even a movie made in France based on her book. 

If the story she gives as her real life is true, that her parents were killed as resistance fighters, and the rest of her family were Nazi sympathizers, it doesn't condone what she did, but it at least makes her something of a sympathetic figure.  Problem is, its probably impossible to know if even this story is true.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 08:36 PM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
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