Author of fake Holocaust memoir admits: I'm not even Jewish

By The Associated Press

It was a shock to Misha Defonseca's readers this year when she admitted that the best-selling story of her tortured childhood during the Holocaust was false, but her U.S. publisher saw it as an opportunity to undo a stinging, 7-year-old court judgment.

Jane Daniel says she never would have been ordered to pay Defonseca and her ghost writer $32.4 million over her handling of profits from "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years" had the jury known the book was filled with lies.

Defonseca never lived with wolves to escape the Nazis, never killed a German soldier in self-defense, never walked 3,000 miles across Europe in search of her parents. Contrary to the book's claims, Defonseca admitted in February that she isn't even Jewish.

Daniel is asking a judge to throw out the verdict; a hearing is set for Thursday in Middlesex Superior Court. "This is a case where everyone was so enamored and felt so much sympathy for the Holocaust survivor, it just overwhelmed everyone in the case, including the jury," Daniel said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Now to find out that the book was not true, that is fraud on the court."

Defonseca and her ghost writer, Vera Lee, said the truth of the 1997 book had no bearing on the jury's finding that Daniel cheated them out of profits. "It has nothing to do with that," said Defonseca, 71, of Dudley.

"This credibility issue is something Jane is digging up now," Lee said. "That's not what the trial was about. It was about the fact that she cheated us."

Daniel met Defonseca in the 1990s while Daniel was doing publicity for a video company that had made a memorial video for Defonseca about her dog. "She said the reason she was so attached to dogs is because she had been so attached to wolves," Daniel recalled. Once she heard Defonseca tell her whole story, she asked her to write a book.

The harrowing tale of a little Jewish girl's survival became a best-seller in Europe, was translated into 18 languages, was turned into a feature film in France, and drew interest from the Walt Disney Co. and Oprah Winfrey. But the book sold only 5,000 copies in the United States after Daniel had a falling out with Defonseca and Lee.

The two sued Daniel for breach of contract. In 2001, a Middlesex District Court jury found that Daniel had failed to promote the book as promised and had hidden profits. The jury awarded Defonseca $7.5 million and Lee $3.3 million, but those amounts were later tripled by a judge who found Daniel and her small publishing company, Mt. Ivy Press, had misled both women and tried to claim royalties herself by rewriting the book.

In a brief telephone interview, Defonseca would not discuss her admission that she made up most of the details of the book. In February she acknowledged that her book was a fantasy that she kept repeating.

"his story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," Defonseca said in a statement released by her lawyers.

Defonseca admitted the book was not true after a genealogical researcher working with Daniel on her own book about the case uncovered inconsistencies in her story, including records that showed Defonseca was baptized Catholic and had attended an elementary school in Schaarbeek, Belgium, in 1943, during a time in which she said in her book she was living with wolves in Ukraine.

Daniel's lawyers are asking a judge to overturn the jury's award because Defonseca "perpetrated a hoax" on Daniel, her publishing company, the public, the trial judge and a state appeals court that upheld the verdict. They said Defonseca directly violated a provision in her publishing contract with Daniel in which she affirmed that the content of the book was true.

"From the outset, she breached her contract, but nobody knew it until much later," said Brian McCormick, one of Daniel's lawyers.

Lee's attorney Frank Frisoli said too much time has gone by for Daniel to challenge the verdict now. Also, after the judgment, Daniel reached agreements with both Lee and Defonseca to settle with Daniel for far less than $32.4 million. Daniel said her father paid $425,000 to Defonseca, while Lee received $250,000 from a settlement Daniel received after suing her literary agent and has the right to sell her house in Gloucester.

Lee said that she warned Daniel several times during the writing of the book that some aspects of Defonseca's story were incredible, but that Daniel dismissed her concerns.

"I think she went along thinking she had a blockbuster and she didn't want to hear anything about it not possibly being true," Lee said.

When news of the hoax came out in February, however, Lee said that she had always believed Defonseca's stories and that and no research she did gave her a reason to do otherwise.

"She always maintained that this was truth as she recalled it, and I trusted that that was the case," Lee said then.

Daniel has said she could not fully research Defonseca's story before it was published because the woman claimed she did not know her parents' names, her birthday or where she was born.

Daniel acknowledges she had doubts about portions of Defonseca's story, but said she believed it after talking to Holocaust survivors.

"If you read a lot of Holocaust literature, all survivor stories are miraculous," she said.