Feb 29 2008

Random Thought: Stop the Crazy Insanity!

Published by auria cortes at 4:11 pm under Random Thoughts About My Writing

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The Boston Globe writes the following synposis of Misha Defonseca’s memoir Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years: “6-year-old Misha is rescued at school in 1941 when her parents are arrested and deported. She is spirited away to the De Wael family and given a new name, Monique. Unhappy with her host family, she runs away in hopes of finding her parents. Over the next four years she wanders alone across Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Yugoslavia, across the Adriatic Sea by boat to Italy, then through Italy across the Alps to France and back to Belgium. Along the way, she is sheltered by packs of wolves, kills a German soldier, witnesses an eastbound freight train full of Jews, wanders into the Warsaw Ghetto, and escapes.” 

Isn’t that an intriguing story? Gives one goosebumps just reading about it. Well, guess what. The memoir is false. Defonsceca isn’t even Jewish!

It seems that there is no end to what people will do to garener attention.  This story has upset me on many levels. Of course, as a writer and someone who wishes to write a memoir at some point, I’m afraid memoirs will start losing credibilty. And then as a human being, I’m just disgusted by the fact that she pretends to be Jewish and was in Brussels during wartime. Read the full story here. 

You know, we all have a story to tell, but our stories aren’t always meant to be read by the public. Defonsceca should have published her book as a work of fiction. The other alternative was to keep her story all to herself.

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