Misha's Story

My An Arkie's Faith column from the February 2, 2022, issue of The Polk County Pulse. 

The unassuming woman stood in front of her congregation at the Temple Beth Torah in Holliston, Massachusetts, and for the first time, told them her incredible story of survival. Everyone in the community knew Misha Defonseca, but they had no idea she had experienced such hardship during the Holocaust. The weeping fifty-something woman kept her friends and neighbors spellbound as she related her wartime experiences. 

In a soft-spoken voice, she gave horrifying details of her childhood. The Nazis hauled off her Belgian parents to concentration camps in Germany. Misha was taken in by a Catholic family and given a new name to hide her Jewish identity. Hers was the story of so many “hidden children” of the era. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “only 6 to 11% of Europe’s prewar Jewish population of children survived. Among the small number of European Jewish children still alive at the end of the Holocaust, thousands survived because they were hidden. Many parents sent their children into hiding with Christian families. For many of those lucky enough to be sheltered by religious institutions or adopted by Gentile families, survival often came at the cost of their true identity.”

Misha related the details of her story. She was placed in the care of a Catholic family who gave her a new name: Monique de Wael. The family mistreated her, so she determined to run away and find her parents. Over the next four years, she wandered through Germany, Poland, and Ukraine, turning south through Romania and the Balkans, hitching a boat to Italy, then walking back to Belgium via France. For most of this time, she slept in forests and was fed and protected by packs of friendly wolves for weeks at a time. Tears streamed down her face as she talked about witnessing the execution of children and saving herself from a German soldier by killing him with a pocketknife.

“I had tears in my eyes,” remembers Karen Schulman, a friend of Misha’s. “She was hungry; she was cold; she was lonely; she wanted her parents. How did this person survive?” Rabbi Joanne Yocheved Heiligman, who was at Temple Beth Torah related his memories of that day.” Misha said she was a survivor. She was obviously very traumatized, but she had never talked about it,” He continued, “she wasn’t pushing to tell the story—she told the story when I asked her.” 

When Jane Daniel heard Misha’s story that day, it made a deep impression on her. Jane owned Mount Ivy Press and realized that the story would make a great book. She convinced Misha to write her story with the help of a professional writer. Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years was released in 1997 and translated into twenty languages. It became a hit in Europe, where Misha became a celebrity, touring with her book from country to country. Disney expressed interest in acquiring the rights, and Oprah chose the book for her Book Club, filming a segment of Misha playing with wolves. On the day of the interview with Oprah, Misha backed out. Her friends and publisher were shocked.

At this point, things started unraveling. Misha’s relationship with her publisher deteriorated, and they ended up in court. The lawsuit and subsequent ruling in favor of Misha left Jane Daniel millions of dollars in debt. The publisher turned detective, hoping to find something that would help overturn the verdict and the 32 million dollar judgment. Jane began to investigate the inconsistencies in Misha’s story. With the help of Evelyne Haendel, a Belgian genealogist, Daniel uncovered the truth about Misha’s past. Evelyne, a Holocaust survivor, did the detective legwork in Belgium, poring through the birth register and lists of wartime deportations. She found that Misha was never a “hidden child,” and she wasn’t Jewish. Evelyne found documents from Misha’s life, such as a baptismal record and a school register showing her enrolled in elementary school in 1943 when Misha was supposed to be wandering through Europe.

The truth is that Misha was born in 1937 as Monique de Wael to Catholic parents. She would have been only four years old when her fabricated story occurred. Her parents were a part of the Belgian resistance and were arrested and taken to Germany, where they died during the war. Misha, or Monique, never left Belgium during this time, living with family members and attending school. 

In 2008, when Misha finally admitted that her story was pure fiction, she issued a statement that read, in part: “They called me ‘The Traitor’s Daughter’ because my father was suspected of having spoken under torture. This book, this story, is mine. It is not the actual reality, but it was my reality, my way of surviving. I ask for forgiveness. All I ever wanted was to exorcise my suffering.” And she told the newspaper Le Soir, “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.”

In the documentary Misha and the Wolves, writer and director Sam Hobkinson tells Misha’s story. Talking about his film, he says, “we want to believe—and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But we should be careful. We’re in a world now where truth is a very slippery concept, so it should remind people to be more questioning.” We live in a time where many people seem to find it challenging to differentiate between the truth and the lies they tell themselves and others. It looks like David was writing about our times when he wrote, “Everyone lies to his neighbors. They say one thing and mean another.” Psalms 12:2 (ICB) The proliferation of fake news and polarized views represented in unending social media arguments demonstrate that the truth isn’t always easy to determine. 

Gentle Reader, we as Christians need to make sure that the widespread falsehoods of this world are not deceiving us. Even more importantly, we need to ensure that we are not passing along untrue things. Lying changes more than the facts; it also changes the liar. If I lie to you, I erode our relationship. If I have lied to you, why should you believe anything else that I say? Today, let us pray these words from the book of Proverbs, “keep me from lying and being dishonest.” Proverbs 30:8 (ICB)