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Faked Holocaust memoir: Den of lies
Seldom has a publisher set out to prove that her own book is a hoax. But that is what happened with the memoir of Misha Defonseca, a heartwarming Holocaust-era tale that has turned out to be a fake. The publisher, Jane Daniel, said she disregarded warnings about the book in its early stages but later - after losing a devastating lawsuit by the author - sought proof that the woman she had once hoped would make her a fortune was a liar.
Massachusetts author Defonseca, who wrote "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," admitted Thursday through her lawyer that her memoir was fabricated. Published in 1997 by Daniel's one-woman operation, the book told the tale of a little Belgian Jewish girl who trekked across Europe on foot during World War II, searching for her deported parents and eluding capture by hiding with packs of friendly wolves. The book was a bestseller in Europe, translated into 18 languages, and the basis for a hit French movie now showing across the continent. After documents emerged that discredited Defonseca's story, her Belgian lawyer issued a statement admitting that she isn't Jewish and that she spent the war safely in Brussels.
The memoir is a fake, but the bitter 10-year legal war over its rights and its profits is real - and still going on. In 2002, Daniel was hit with a $32.4 million judgment, upheld on appeal, in breach-of-contract suits brought by Defonseca and her ghostwriter, Vera Lee. Since the judgment, Daniel says, she has lost most of her assets, spent a night in jail on a judge's order, and is about to lose her house, a bed-and-breakfast inn overlooking Gloucester Harbor.
"It's every woman's worst nightmare," she said, "becoming a bag lady."
Lee's lawyer, Frank Frisoli of Cambridge, is shedding no tears. Frisoli said, "I question her motives and her veracity."
The tale is almost as strange as the one in the book. Defonseca and her husband, Maurice, who are originally from Belgium, moved to the United States from Paris in 1988 and bought a house in Millis. By the mid-1990s, he was unemployed. Misha, an animal lover with a houseful of dogs, began to tell the vivid story of wandering across Europe as a 6-year-old after her parents were deported in 1941, being sheltered by wolves, killing a German soldier, witnessing an eastbound freight train full of moaning Jews, sneaking into and out of the Warsaw Ghetto, and finally finding her way home - still on foot - at war's end. She gave gripping talks to Boston-area Jewish organizations.
Daniel, a freelance writer and sometime publisher, heard about Defonseca and arranged to meet her at a restaurant, where Defonseca retold her yarn. "I thought it was far-fetched, but who knows?" Daniel said. She saw a lucrative book, and Defonseca agreed to a contract. Daniel brought Lee, her French-speaking friend and neighbor, into the deal as coauthor. Defonseca told stories and searched her memory, and Lee put it in writing.
Daniel did further rewriting, and she and Lee quarreled over who wrote what. The book was published - with a glowing blurb from Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, author of the Holocaust memoir "Night" - with Lee's name on the copyright page, not on the cover. Lee sued Daniel in 1998, claiming her rights as coauthor had been violated. Defonseca also sued, alleging that Daniel had broken her promise to publicize the book and had hidden profits in offshore corporate accounts.
The book had excited intense interest at first. The Walt Disney Co. signed an option for a movie, and Oprah Winfrey's program filmed Defonseca frolicking with wolves at Ipswich's Wolf Hollow, but both dropped out amid the bitter court battle. Daniel denied all the allegations, but in 2001 a Middlesex Superior Court jury found for the plaintiffs, slapping Daniel with $7.5 million for damages against Defonseca and $3.3 million for damages against Lee. Judge Elizabeth Fahey tripled the damages, to $9.9 million for Lee and $22.4 million for Defonseca. Rights to the book reverted to Defonseca. Though the English edition went out of print, she signed deals with European publishers and French filmmaker Vera Belmont and toured the continent when the book became a bestseller.
Early on, Holocaust scholars dismissed the book. Daniel asked Lawrence L. Langer, a Simmons College professor emeritus, a preeminent authority on Holocaust narratives, and Deborah Dwork, director of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, to read the manuscript. Dwork recalls that she and Langer, who discussed it, pointed out numerous historical and geographical errors to Daniel. "She kept finding ways to get around my objections," Dwork said. "She said, 'Of course, she was a young girl at the time. You are a historian. This is a memoir - people make mistakes on details and dates all the time.' "
European readers ate up the story, but some had doubts. Belgian surgeon Serge Aroles, author of a book about the history of wolf-children narratives, said he read the French edition and right away thought it was a fake. He knew the roundup of Belgian Jews had happened in 1942, not 1941. Other details about times and places were wrong. And the wolf part, he thought, was laughable.
"It was an utterly absurd story about the wolves," Aroles said, "a hoax and a swindle, totally incredible." When he wrote an article dismissing the book, he said, "fascist and anti-Semitic websites used my article, and people who defended [Defonseca] accused me of being a fascist and anti-Semite. The French press was blind, deaf, and mute."
Meanwhile, the screws were turning on Daniel. She said Defonseca's lawyer went after a $425,000 inheritance held by Daniel's father, who signed it over to Defonseca. In spring 2006, Frisoli, Lee's lawyer, demanded that Daniel pay $2,000 a month, and when she protested that she didn't have it, a judge jailed her for contempt. She spent one night in MCI-Framingham, until a friend raised three months' worth of payments. Under threat of being sent back to jail, she signed a settlement with Frisoli, paving the way for him to take her house.
With no other recourse, Daniel decided to try to prove what Langer and Dwork had told her in the beginning - that the book was a lie - hoping that if she succeeded, she could go back to court, claim fraud on the author's part, and challenge the judgment. Last year she began telling her doleful tale on her blog, hoping someone might have information on Misha's origins. Waltham-based genealogical researcher Sharon Sergeant noticed the blog, was intrigued by the challenge, and contacted Daniel.
Sergeant began working with Belgian sources, including Aroles, and eventually found the truth: Misha Defonseca was baptized Monique De Wael in a Brussels Catholic church in 1937 and was enrolled in a local primary school in 1943-44. Her parents were not Jewish but resistance fighters arrested and executed by the Germans.
In her statement this week, Defonseca admitted she had made up the story of the journey and wolves - and blamed Daniel for inducing her to put it in the book. "There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world," said her statement, translated from French. "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." Defonseca, who now lives in Dudley, declined through her husband to be interviewed.
The Holocaust scholars are outraged, as much at Daniel as at Defonseca. "What happened to the Jews was the worst atrocity in history, and people who exploit it for profit, by posing as Jews or lying about being part of the experience, insult those who went through it," said Langer. "It's as bad as saying the Holocaust never happened."
The truth, however, may be irrelevant to the law. Publishing-law experts say that too much time may have elapsed since the judgment to challenge it now, which Daniel hopes to do with the new information. Lee says she doesn't want Daniel to lose her house, but Frisoli has picked up the scent of final victory.
"She's a very unhappy camper," he said of Daniel. "And when I find a buyer for that house, she is out."
Massachusetts author Defonseca, who wrote "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," admitted Thursday through her lawyer that her memoir was fabricated. Published in 1997 by Daniel's one-woman operation, the book told the tale of a little Belgian Jewish girl who trekked across Europe on foot during World War II, searching for her deported parents and eluding capture by hiding with packs of friendly wolves. The book was a bestseller in Europe, translated into 18 languages, and the basis for a hit French movie now showing across the continent. After documents emerged that discredited Defonseca's story, her Belgian lawyer issued a statement admitting that she isn't Jewish and that she spent the war safely in Brussels.
The memoir is a fake, but the bitter 10-year legal war over its rights and its profits is real - and still going on. In 2002, Daniel was hit with a $32.4 million judgment, upheld on appeal, in breach-of-contract suits brought by Defonseca and her ghostwriter, Vera Lee. Since the judgment, Daniel says, she has lost most of her assets, spent a night in jail on a judge's order, and is about to lose her house, a bed-and-breakfast inn overlooking Gloucester Harbor.
"It's every woman's worst nightmare," she said, "becoming a bag lady."
Lee's lawyer, Frank Frisoli of Cambridge, is shedding no tears. Frisoli said, "I question her motives and her veracity."
The tale is almost as strange as the one in the book. Defonseca and her husband, Maurice, who are originally from Belgium, moved to the United States from Paris in 1988 and bought a house in Millis. By the mid-1990s, he was unemployed. Misha, an animal lover with a houseful of dogs, began to tell the vivid story of wandering across Europe as a 6-year-old after her parents were deported in 1941, being sheltered by wolves, killing a German soldier, witnessing an eastbound freight train full of moaning Jews, sneaking into and out of the Warsaw Ghetto, and finally finding her way home - still on foot - at war's end. She gave gripping talks to Boston-area Jewish organizations.
Daniel, a freelance writer and sometime publisher, heard about Defonseca and arranged to meet her at a restaurant, where Defonseca retold her yarn. "I thought it was far-fetched, but who knows?" Daniel said. She saw a lucrative book, and Defonseca agreed to a contract. Daniel brought Lee, her French-speaking friend and neighbor, into the deal as coauthor. Defonseca told stories and searched her memory, and Lee put it in writing.
Daniel did further rewriting, and she and Lee quarreled over who wrote what. The book was published - with a glowing blurb from Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, author of the Holocaust memoir "Night" - with Lee's name on the copyright page, not on the cover. Lee sued Daniel in 1998, claiming her rights as coauthor had been violated. Defonseca also sued, alleging that Daniel had broken her promise to publicize the book and had hidden profits in offshore corporate accounts.
The book had excited intense interest at first. The Walt Disney Co. signed an option for a movie, and Oprah Winfrey's program filmed Defonseca frolicking with wolves at Ipswich's Wolf Hollow, but both dropped out amid the bitter court battle. Daniel denied all the allegations, but in 2001 a Middlesex Superior Court jury found for the plaintiffs, slapping Daniel with $7.5 million for damages against Defonseca and $3.3 million for damages against Lee. Judge Elizabeth Fahey tripled the damages, to $9.9 million for Lee and $22.4 million for Defonseca. Rights to the book reverted to Defonseca. Though the English edition went out of print, she signed deals with European publishers and French filmmaker Vera Belmont and toured the continent when the book became a bestseller.
Early on, Holocaust scholars dismissed the book. Daniel asked Lawrence L. Langer, a Simmons College professor emeritus, a preeminent authority on Holocaust narratives, and Deborah Dwork, director of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, to read the manuscript. Dwork recalls that she and Langer, who discussed it, pointed out numerous historical and geographical errors to Daniel. "She kept finding ways to get around my objections," Dwork said. "She said, 'Of course, she was a young girl at the time. You are a historian. This is a memoir - people make mistakes on details and dates all the time.' "
European readers ate up the story, but some had doubts. Belgian surgeon Serge Aroles, author of a book about the history of wolf-children narratives, said he read the French edition and right away thought it was a fake. He knew the roundup of Belgian Jews had happened in 1942, not 1941. Other details about times and places were wrong. And the wolf part, he thought, was laughable.
"It was an utterly absurd story about the wolves," Aroles said, "a hoax and a swindle, totally incredible." When he wrote an article dismissing the book, he said, "fascist and anti-Semitic websites used my article, and people who defended [Defonseca] accused me of being a fascist and anti-Semite. The French press was blind, deaf, and mute."
Meanwhile, the screws were turning on Daniel. She said Defonseca's lawyer went after a $425,000 inheritance held by Daniel's father, who signed it over to Defonseca. In spring 2006, Frisoli, Lee's lawyer, demanded that Daniel pay $2,000 a month, and when she protested that she didn't have it, a judge jailed her for contempt. She spent one night in MCI-Framingham, until a friend raised three months' worth of payments. Under threat of being sent back to jail, she signed a settlement with Frisoli, paving the way for him to take her house.
With no other recourse, Daniel decided to try to prove what Langer and Dwork had told her in the beginning - that the book was a lie - hoping that if she succeeded, she could go back to court, claim fraud on the author's part, and challenge the judgment. Last year she began telling her doleful tale on her blog, hoping someone might have information on Misha's origins. Waltham-based genealogical researcher Sharon Sergeant noticed the blog, was intrigued by the challenge, and contacted Daniel.
Sergeant began working with Belgian sources, including Aroles, and eventually found the truth: Misha Defonseca was baptized Monique De Wael in a Brussels Catholic church in 1937 and was enrolled in a local primary school in 1943-44. Her parents were not Jewish but resistance fighters arrested and executed by the Germans.
In her statement this week, Defonseca admitted she had made up the story of the journey and wolves - and blamed Daniel for inducing her to put it in the book. "There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world," said her statement, translated from French. "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." Defonseca, who now lives in Dudley, declined through her husband to be interviewed.
The Holocaust scholars are outraged, as much at Daniel as at Defonseca. "What happened to the Jews was the worst atrocity in history, and people who exploit it for profit, by posing as Jews or lying about being part of the experience, insult those who went through it," said Langer. "It's as bad as saying the Holocaust never happened."
The truth, however, may be irrelevant to the law. Publishing-law experts say that too much time may have elapsed since the judgment to challenge it now, which Daniel hopes to do with the new information. Lee says she doesn't want Daniel to lose her house, but Frisoli has picked up the scent of final victory.
"She's a very unhappy camper," he said of Daniel. "And when I find a buyer for that house, she is out."
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