Fake Holocaust Novelist Misha Defonseca Ordered To Pay $22M to Publisher
The author of a fraudulent Holocaust memoir has been ordered by a Massachusetts appeals court to pay back $22.5 million to her publisher.
Misha Defonseca’s “Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years,” published in 1997, claimed to tell of her experiences as a young Jewish girl fleeing the Nazis during World War II. The best-selling book was made into a French film, and in 1998, Defonseca and her ghostwriter won a $34.2 million judgment against Mount Ivy Press and its founder Jane Daniel for allegedly hiding profits.
The book’s lies began to be exposed in 2008, when researchers reported they could find no evidence of Defonseca’s family in any Holocaust archives. Later, Daniel, uncovered many of the memoir’s fraudulent claims, finding that Defonseca’s real name was Monica Ernestine Josephine De Wael, that she was not Jewish and that she spent the war as a student at a Belgian school.
Defonseca, who lives in Massachusetts and is now 76, admitted her memoir was fake, but told the Associated Press, in a statement that, it was “not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.