Misha Defonseca

[5][6] Defonseca was born Monique de Wael, the daughter of Catholic parents who were arrested, deported, and murdered by the Nazis for being resistance members.

In the local community, she was known as the "daughter of the traitor," as her father, Robert de Wael, 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.

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.

The first person who publicly doubted the authenticity of the story was Henryk M. Broder, who wrote an article about Defonseca in 1996 for the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

[13] 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.

Plaque in Schaerbeek to employees of the local government who "died for the nation" in the Second World War. The blank line at the bottom once held De Wael's father's name.