Exposing the Fakes

Unfortunately, there have been several books and memoirs written which were fake or based on inaccurate information. Please feel free to share here the titles of books which fall into this category.

List of fake memoirs:

>3 labfs39: >5 avatiakh: Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love that Survived by Herman Rosenblat and Angel Girl
>4 MissBrangwen: Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris?
>6 avatiakh: Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years (Misha and the Wolves) by Misha Defonseca
>6 avatiakh: Hannah: From Dachau to the Olympics and Beyond

Herman Rosenblat wrote a Holocaust memoir purporting to tell the true story of how a girl would passed him food through the fence of Buchenwald concentration camp, thereby saving his life, and how they fell in love and married after the war. In 1996 he told his story to Oprah Winfrey, who said it was the greatest love story she had ever heard. Plans were made for a motion picture. Shortly before publication of The Angel at the Fence, however, scholars and survivors came forward with evidence that, although Rosenblat was a survivor of Buchenwald, the crux of the story (the apple at the fence) could never have happened and that there were other inaccuracies as well. In an interview with Good Morning America in 2009, Rosenblat said “In my imagination, in my mind, I believed it. Even now, I believe it, that she was there and she threw apples to me … In my imagination, it was true.”

Article in the Guardian: When one extraordinary life story is not enough



Later that year, Penelope Holt published a novel called The Apple : A Novel Based on the Herman Rosenblat Holocaust Love Story.

As far as I can judge, The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris falls into this category, too. It is 'based on a true story', but includes incorrect information. Maybe not a total fake, but it is not much better to my mind.

I bought this book spontaneously when it was all over instagram and was quite angry when afterwards I found out that many of the details are not correct or that some of the incidents told in the story would not have been possible.

A quote from an article from the Guardian:

"The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum concluded that the novel is “an impression about Auschwitz inspired by authentic events, almost without any value as a document”.
“The nature of human memory, especially where the events recalled occurred over 70 years ago, requires confrontation with other sources. From today’s perspective, we can only regret that no specialist in the area of camp matters was invited to work on the book,” the report ends. “Given the number of factual errors, therefore, this book cannot be recommended as a valuable title for persons who want to explore and understand the history of KL Auschwitz.”

I wanted to include the link to the article, but LT won't let me - it seems to block it.

>3 labfs39: There was also a children's picturebook based on the story.

'The publisher of a children’s book based on the fabricated love story of Herman Rosenblat, the Holocaust survivor who said he first met his wife when he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, has canceled pending reprints of the book and will refund the price of any returned books.'

Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years was exposed as a fake Holocaust memoir in 2008. There had also been a 2007 film, Surviving with the Wolves and now a Netflix documentary, Misha and the Wolves, about how the fake was exposed.
https://www.moviemaker.com/misha-and-the-wolves-netflix-who-is-misha-defonseca-w...

Hannah: From Dachau to the Olympics and Beyond (2005) was exposed as fake in 2009. Rosemarie Pence's claims of her life story are quite fabulist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemarie_Pence

I read The Man who Broke into Auschwitz (2011) a few years go. I found Denis Avey's war experiences before he even got to Auschwitz an extraordinary nonstop adventure. His claim of breaking into Auschwitz hasn't been completely collaborated and yet can't be disproved either. Around 2014 'Yad Vashem considered Avey for the honour Righteous among the Nations, but said it was unable to grant the award because it was unable to substantiate his account of the prisoner swap.' He died before he could defend his story.
His story comes across as convincing and yet raises questions all along, can all this have happened to one British soldier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Avey

>4 MissBrangwen: But it's a novel, not a non-fiction????

>6 avatiakh: Thank you for recommending the Netflix documentary, Misha and the Wolves. I watched it tonight, and it was very interesting.

The facts that she wasn't Jewish and that it was a complete fabrication were made worse by the years she spent visiting schoolchildren in France and Belgium telling her story. I'm sure her childhood was difficult after her father's actions were discovered, but it doesn't justify such an outrageous lie told for so many years. The publisher was guilty of greed and turning a blind eye to the truth too.

Something the radio host who first interviewed Misha said struck me, "Far be it for me to question her." I think it raises an interesting point: where is the balancing point between believing survivor stories, whether of the Holocaust or other traumas, and applying a reasonable amount of judgement (although I'm not sure that is the right word). Certainly the story of a seven year old traipsing off into the woods to live with wolves sounds too fantastical to be true, yet because of who said it, the story was not only believed, but published in 20 languages, made into a movie, and taught to schoolchildren. My desire to believe the victim and my innate skepticism are at odds with such questions.