By James Mackenzie
PARIS (Reuters) - The author of a best-selling
autobiography that told the story of a young Jewish girl saved
by wolves while hiding from the Nazis in wartime Europe has
admitted that most of the story was made up.
Misha Defonseca’s book, “Survivre avec les Loups” is known
in English as “Misha, a Memoir of the Holocaust Years” and has
just been made into a successful film.
She said she had invented an alternative story to make up
for her painful real experiences.
“It’s true, I have always recounted to myself a life,
another life, a life that cut me off from my family, a life far
from the men I hated,” she told the daily Le Figaro in an
interview published on Friday.
Defonseca’s book told the story of a 7-year-old Belgian
Jewish girl who journeys across Europe after her parents were
arrested by the Nazis during World War Two.
For much of the time she sleeps in forests, fed and
protected by wolves, like Rudyard Kipling’s character Mowgli in
“The Jungle Book.”
Doubts over her story emerged recently and she has been
involved in a long-running dispute with her publisher over
royalties and the marketing of the book.
Defonseca, who said her real name is Monique Dewael, was
four years old when her father was arrested by the Nazis in
Belgium and she was brought up by relatives. Continued…
