Offshoot of February 16th Post

It takes all kinds...

Author admits making up memoir of surviving Holocaust
By David Mehegan, Globe Staff February 29, 2008


Eleven years after the publication of her best-selling Holocaust memoir - a heartwarming tale of a small Jewish girl trekking across Europe and living with wolves - the Massachusetts author yesterday admitted the whole story was a hoax.

In a statement issued by her Belgian lawyer, Misha Defonseca of Dudley, whose book, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," has been translated into 18 languages and is the basis for a new French movie, "Survivre avec les Loups" ("Surviving With the Wolves"), confessed that she is not Jewish and that she spent the war safely in Brussels.
The 1997 book was the center of a multimillion-dollar legal battle pitting Defonseca and her coauthor, Vera Lee of Newton, against publisher Jane Daniel of Gloucester. The book was a bestseller in Europe and Canada, and attracted attention from Walt Disney Co. and Oprah Winfrey, but it sold few copies in the United States, largely because the marketing stopped after the authors sued.

Daniel's imprint, Mt. Ivy Press, was a one-woman operation when she met Defonseca in the mid-1990s, heard her story, and suggested that she write a book. In 2001, a Middlesex Superior Court jury issued a $7.5 million breach-of-contract judgment against Daniel after Defonseca and Lee alleged that she had failed to publicize the book as promised and had hidden profits. The judge in the case tripled the damages to $22.5 million, and an appeals court upheld the verdict in 2005.

Yesterday's confession follows a week of intense publicity in French and Belgian media, prompted by disclosure of documents unearthed by Waltham-based genealogical researcher Sharon Sergeant showing that Monique De Wael (Defonseca's real maiden name) was baptized in a Brussels Catholic church in September 1937 and that she was enrolled in a Brussels primary school in 1943-44. The researcher also discovered that Defonseca's parents, Robert and Josephine De Wael, were members of the Belgian resistance and were arrested and executed by the Nazis.

In her statement, approximately translated from the French, Defonseca said: "Yes, my name is Monique De Wael, but I have wanted to forget it since I was 4 years old. My parents were arrested and I was taken in by my grandfather, Ernest De Wael, and my uncle, Maurice De Wael. I was called 'daughter of a traitor' because my father was suspected of having spoken under torture in the prison of Saint-Gilles. Ever since I can remember, I felt Jewish. . . . There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world. The story in the book is mine. It is not the actual reality - it was my reality, my way of surviving. At first, I did not want to publish it, but then I was convinced by Jane Daniel. I ask forgiveness from all those who feel betrayed."

In the book, 6-year-old Misha is rescued at school in 1941 when her parents are arrested and deported. She is spirited away to the De Wael family and given a new name, Monique. Unhappy with her host family, she runs away in hopes of finding her parents. Over the next four years she wanders alone across Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Yugoslavia, across the Adriatic Sea by boat to Italy, then through Italy across the Alps to France and back to Belgium. Along the way, she is sheltered by packs of wolves, kills a German soldier, witnesses an eastbound freight train full of Jews, wanders into the Warsaw Ghetto, and escapes. A 2001 story in The Boston Globe raised questions about the book's veracity, but Defonseca insisted that it was all true.
"I am flabbergasted," Daniel said yesterday. "It's like something from heaven. I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders." She said she hopes to challenge the Middlesex judgment on grounds that the author's original contract had warranted the truth of the story, and that therefore the publisher had been defrauded before the book was published.
Reached yesterday, Defonseca's husband, Maurice, said his wife would not come to the phone, and he referred all questions to the Brussels lawyer. Vera Lee's lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokeswoman for Vera Belmont, the French director of "Survivre avec les Loups," said in an e-mail: "Vera is not making any comment. Her movie is a fiction from the book. No matter if it's true or not - she believes it is, anyway - she just thinks it's a beautiful story."

David Mehegan can be reached at mehegan@globe.com.
© Copyright

Six Words

This entry references a topic that has come to have some circulation in my life lately:


"NPR Book Notes
Non-Fiction
Six-Word Memoirs: Life Stories Distilled
See a gallery of illustrated six-word memoirs



“Revenge is living well, without you.”
Author Joyce Carol Oates

“Fight, work, persevere -- gain slight notoriety.”
Comic book writer Harvey Pekar


Talk of the Nation, February 7, 2008 · Once asked to write a full story in six words, legend has it that novelist Ernest Hemingway responded: "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn."
In this spirit of simple yet profound brevity, the online magazine Smith asked readers to write the story of their own lives in a single sentence. The result is Not Quite What I Was Planning, a collection of six-word memoirs by famous and not-so-famous writers, artists and musicians. Their stories are sometimes sad, often funny — and always concise.
The book is full of well-known names — from writer Dave Eggers (Fifteen years since last professional haircut), to singer Aimee Mann (Couldn't cope so I wrote songs), to comedian Stephen Colbert (Well, I thought it was funny).

The collection has plenty of six-word insights from everyday folks as well: Love me or leave me alone was scrawled on a hand dryer in a public bathroom; I still make coffee for two was penned by a 27-year-old who had just been dumped.

Larry Smith, founding editor of Smith magazine, and Rachel Fershleiser, Smith's memoir editor, talk about the experience of capturing real-life stories in six words — no more, no less.

Fershleiser's six-word memoir? Bespectacled, besneakered, read and ran around.

And Smith's: Big hair, big heart, big hurry"

So then what about me?

Head inclined, listening for the muse.

(if you think this is easy to do, you're mistaken)

What You Do

Well, to the relief of some, I haven't got it in me this week. I wanted to talk about making money with your talent but it hits too close to home on the day of my re-audtion for TFC.

I'll leave you with this: be good to each other.

Courage

"Oh Father! Betsie! If I had known, would I have gone ahead? Could I have done the things I did?"

- Corrie Ten Boom

Today I want to talk about courage. I am reminded of the woman who wrote these words when I read about a recent decision made by the French president to have French school children learn the story of the French children who were victims of the holocaust.

Corrie Ten Boom and her family owned a watch shop in Haarlem (a city west of Amsterdam). The family decided to help Jews as well as those from other groups escape from the Nazis by hiding them in a secret place. Those people would then secretly leave the city on their way to safety. Of course this was very dangerous work; the threat of discovery was ever present. Of course Corrie did find the strength to help those people.

I am moved by that fact that, years later when recounting the story, Corrie still thought to ask of her self: would I have done it? The children of France need to not just learn the stories of the victims, but of the overcomers and those who helped them to overcome. The real courage comes not from showing bravery in the face of the Nazis (this is courage but the immediacy of a situation can make such bravery possible) but making the decision to put oneself in the path of those who would do harm to others.

We can all postulate as to what might become of us if we put ourselves in the position of doing something to take someone out of harms way, but will we be able to accept the decision and begin to live it day to day?

A lesson in consideration

Years ago a friend of mine taught me a very important lesson. He told me a story about himself and how a good friend of his actually taught him this lesson (see how this works?) He told me that one day this friend asked him "hey, how's it going?" and without further ado he began to tell her all about how stressed he was and how terrible his life was going. She listened for a bit (it was unclear how long) and then interrupted him. She went on to explain that this was becoming a rather bad habit of late, this complaining. She explained further that when one asks another, "How are you?" you must realize that in almost all cases, the burden is on the respondent to not read too much into the question and to respond in a way that includes the person who asked.

For instance "How are you today?" (Maybe you are tired) "Oh, it's been a long day, can't wait to get home!" This is something the person who asked can relate to and does not force them to engage you any further if that person chooses not to.

A good friend or loved one knows what is going on with you and will most likely ask more specific questions, indicating to you that you may proceed to discuss an issue in greater detail.

This has proven to be good advice in my life in that it keeps those around me from becoming leery of me in social (or more intimate) situations. This, like any other good habit, can be difficult to make a part of your life, but in the end is defiantly worth it.

So many things to think about

I would very much like to avoid discussing very personal or intimate details of my life in this blog. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that these details may concern people who do not wiah to be in my blog. As such you may find some of what I relate to be somewhat lacking in detail.

I am feeling very stressed right now with work, I have a lot of translating to do and I'm working on several documents (in English!) that will provide instruction to our patrons. These tasks are in addition to my existing duties as librarian. What really gets me about times like these is that you know that once it is over, you won't feel like this anymore.

Anyway, back to work.