Mrs Defonseca’s book became a runaway bestseller
A woman’s best-selling account of how she lost her parents to the Holocaust and survived by living with wolves in the forests of Europe has been exposed as a fabrication. “Surviving with Wolves”, first published 11 years ago, has been translated into 18 languages and was recently turned into a film. Misha Defonseca, who was born Monique De Wael, confessed that while her parents, members of Belgium’s resistance, were killed by the Nazis her family was not Jewish and most of the events of the book were made up.
Knowing only that her parents had “gone East”, the young Misha sets out to find them equipped only with a tiny compass. After crossing Belgium, Germany and Poland alone on foot, close to starvation in a vast forest, she was adopted by a family of wolves. Defonseca’s book became a runaway bestseller after its publication in Italy and France and has made her a millionaire.
But suspicions were aroused when her old school friends recognised her. They insisted that she was born and raised a Catholic by the De Wael family and lived with her grandfather after her parents were deported. She belonged to a very good family and lived in the most beautiful house on the street. Monique was always ‘special’. She wanted to be the ‘star’ where ever she went.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1580357/Wolf-woman-invents-Holocaust-survival-tale.html
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