But It Was All A Lie
” Misha And The Wolves “
Bizarre Buffet
A Podcast Of All You Can Eat Weird
She inspired the world with her incredible tale of survival, but it was all a lie.
Inspired by the 2021 documentary film written and directed by Sam Hobkinson, streaming on Netflix.
On this episode of Bizarre Buffet, we explore the wildly insane story of Misha Defonseca (born Monique de Wael).
Misha Defonseca is a Belgian-born impersonator and the author of a fraudulent Holocaust memoir titled Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years, first published in 1997 and at that time professed to be a true memoir.
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” Misha And The Wolves ” – Episode Credits
Hosted By Marc Bluestein , Jen Wilson , And Mark Tauriello
Original Episode Art By Mark Tauriello
Original Episode / Story Concept By Jen Wilson
Episode Production By Marc Bluestein
” Misha And The Wolves ” – Show Notes
Episode Question :
What is a something that has happened to you, that is almost unbelievable?
Misha: The Beginning
Tonight I am taking us to Nazi occupied Belgium where over 25,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz from Belgium between 1942-1944.
Spotlight on young Misha, a young 8 year old Jewish girl whose parents were taken away by the Nazis and deported to Auschwitz extermination camp. She was placed in the home of a Roman Catholic family who gave her the pseudonym Monique De Wael. The family treats her cruelly and verbally abuses her calling her “worthless” upon many other names.
Monique De Wael
Fed up with the abuse, Misha decides to flee and go in search of her parents by walking through the woods of Europe, stealing food, clothing, and shoes.
Misha eventually faces starvation, and is adopted by a pack of WOLVES essentially becoming a feral child like our dear friend Oxana. She treks over 1,900 miles from Belgium to the Ukraine, through the Balkans and Germany and Poland. The wolves walked with her along this journey and treated her as one of their own. She was essentially considered at the bottom of the pack, having to be the last to wait to eat until the rest of the wolves ate.
Eventually, Misha sneaks in and out of the Warsaw ghetto in Poland in search of her parents. Misha gets on a boat at one point in Italy and back through Belgium and France. Before the war is over, she takes the life of a Nazi who attempts to rape her by stabbing him with a pocket knife.
When the war is over, she unfortunately never was reunited with her parents and doesn’t know what their fate was. But all in all she is a true survivor of the war. A true inspiration.
Misha And Jane Daniel
Jane Daniel, a publisher of a small publishing company came across Misha’s story after hearing her tell her story at a local synagogue in Massachussetts and signed now Misha Defonseca (her
married name) to write a memoir about her experiences. The book was published in 1997 with over 5,000 copies sold in the United States.
Misha And The Lies
NOW WHAT IF I TOLD YOU THIS ENTIRE STORY WAS A STRAIGHT UP LIE ! ? MISHA WAS FULL OF SHIT !
There was chatter amongst other publishers and Holocaust scholars that Misha’s story was completely false and the events that happened in her story to be nearly impossible. Experts and scholars began to do a deep dive into the history of Misha. Who the fuck was she ?
Her story was optioned for a Walt Disney Company film, however Disney wound up dropping the project due to legal issues between Misha and Jane Daniel the publisher.
Misha filed a lawsuit against Jane Daniel stating that she failed to publish the book properly in the US and failed to give her the author proper share of royalties overseas. In 2001 a jury awarded Defonseca and Lee over $10 million. A judge’s decision later tripled the amount Daniel was required to pay to over $32 million, with $22.5 million to go to Misha and $11 million to Lee. The rights to the book were also awarded to Misha.
As Misha began to tour across Europe and promote the film that was produced in France as well as her book, Jane Daniels and her small publishing company were now in shambles.
The Real Misha Defonesca
Defonseca was born Monique de Wael, the daughter of Catholic parents who were arrested, deported, and murdered by the Nazis for being resistance members. After her parents’ arrest, Monique was sent to live with her grandparents, then her uncle. In the local community, she was known as the “daughter of the traitor,” as her father was accused of disclosing the names of resistance members to the Nazis during his imprisonment.
After being liberated, her father’s name was erased from the stone plaque in honour of the local Nazi-victim employees on the walls of the Schaerbeek municipality
Misha Defonesca In Massachusettes
Defonseca and her husband, Maurice, moved to the United States from Paris in 1988 and bought a house in Millis, Massachusetts. He was unemployed by the mid-1990s. Defonseca began to fantasize a vivid story about her childhood, including having wandered across Europe at the age of six after her parents were deported in 1941, being sheltered by friendly packs of wolves, killing a German soldier in self-defence, sneaking into and out of the Warsaw Ghetto, and finding her way home at the end of the war.[1] Jane Daniel, a local book publisher, convinced Defonseca to write a memoir about her alleged past after she heard the writer tell the story in a Massachusetts synagogue.[6] Daniel published Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years in 1997 through her “one woman operation”, Mt. Ivy Press.[1]
Ending
On 29 February 2008, Defonseca admitted to Le Soir that she had fabricated the tale, after she had been presented with what the paper described as “irrefutable” evidence that her story was false.[12] “The book is a story, it’s my story”, said the writer in a statement issued under her real name. “It’s not the true reality, but it is my reality. There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world.”[13] Defonseca told Le Soir that she had always wanted to forget her real name because she had been called “the traitor’s daughter.”
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