Misha Defonseca

Misha Defonseca (born May 12, 1937 in Etterbeek ; born Monique Ernestine de Wael ) is a Belgian writer , best known for the supposedly autobiographical book Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years (in German: Survival among wolves ), published in 1997 has been. The "autobiography", which also served as a template for a movie produced in 2007, later turned out to be a complete fake .

Life

Monique de Wael worked in Belgium as a secretary at Honeywell-Bull , where she met the manager Maurice Joseph Defonseca, whom she married in 1973. From 1980 the two lived in Amsterdam, then from 1985 in the USA. There Defonseca wrote her book Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years together with a ghostwriter in the mid-1990s , which was published by a small publisher in Gloucester, Massachusetts. This work, which the author describes as autobiographical, tells the story of a Jewish girl who, protected by wolves , wanders across Germany- occupied Europe to find her abducted parents.

The German publicist Henryk M. Broder expressed doubts about Defonseca's story back in 1996. Research by the Belgian newspaper Le Soir finally made it clear in February 2008 that the story was fictitious, as was the author's alleged Jewish ancestry. Defonseca finally confirmed the research, admitting that the story was incorrect.

A court in the US state of Massachusetts ordered Defonseca to pay her publisher $ 22.5 million (around 16.3 million euros). In a judgment that became public in May 2014, the court came to the conclusion that the inventor of the success story Survival Among Wolves had to return author rights previously won in court.

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Million fine for invented Holocaust book , in: Die Welt am May 13, 2014, accessed on May 13, 2014.
^ Henryk M. Broder : In love with a dead cobra. The life story of Misha Defonseca , in: Der Spiegel of December 9, 1996, accessed on May 14, 2014.
^ Holocaust book "Survival among wolves" -author Defonseca condemned , in: Der Spiegel , accessed on May 13, 2014.

personal data
SURNAME	Defonseca, Misha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	De Wael, Monique Ernestine (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Belgian writer
DATE OF BIRTH	May 12, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH	Etterbeek

[1] Million fine for invented Holocaust book , in: Die Welt am May 13, 2014, accessed on May 13, 2014.

[2] Henryk M. Broder : In love with a dead cobra. The life story of Misha Defonseca , in: Der Spiegel of December 9, 1996, accessed on May 14, 2014.

[3] Holocaust book "Survival among wolves" -author Defonseca condemned , in: Der Spiegel , accessed on May 13, 2014.