Surviving with Wolves

• Presentation

  Misha Defonseca was vir­tu­ally unknown when her enig­matic and sen­sa­tional Holocaust memoir, Surviving with Wolves1, first appeared in French and Belgian book­stores in 1997. Despite the fact that the memoir had sold only five thou­sand copies in America, Misha Defonseca’s account cap­ti­vated nearly three hun­dred thou­sand readers and was imme­di­ately trans­lated into four lan­guages.

  Vera Belmont adapted Defonseca’s story of trav­eling across Europe with only a com­pass to find her deported par­ents to the screen and the film was released in Europe in 2007-2008: the suc­cess story con­tinued: nearly seven hun­dred thou­sand spec­ta­tors would share the tragic fate - on the big screen - of little Misha.

  Rumors about the veracity of Misha Defonseca’s account first sur­faced in early 2008 and by February the author con­fessed that her story was made-up. The book, which had been in book­stores for over ten years at the time, had never prompted any serious debate but the film, with its highly evoca­tive images, clearly dis­turbed cer­tain scrupu­lous indi­vid­uals.

  Lionel Duroy hap­pened to be in pub­lisher Bernard Fixot’s office, the day Misha Defonseca con­fessed:

  “I didn’t know her at the time, yet it never occurred to me, not even for a second, that she could have imag­ined the entire Odyssey and, in par­tic­ular, ‘exploited the Holocaust’ with the sole pur­pose of making money or ‘flat­tering her ego.’ Maybe because like so many writers, I too have felt the occa­sional temp­ta­tion to embroider the truth, I imme­di­ately thought that Surviving with Wolves had been made up to over­come a darker, less dra­matic – and undoubt­edly more painful – fate. This feeling led me then and there to pro­pose writing ‘the true story’ of Monique de Wael.”

  Here is her story, pieced together from the bits of his­tory left behind.

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