Everything you need to know about the human condition has already been written by H. L. Mencken. He observed nearly 100 years ago that "The chief preoccupation of mankind is to believe passionately in the palpably untrue."
This indisputable "Natural Truth" is one reason why Barack Obama is the political phenomenon among liberals that he is. It is also the reason why Misha Defonseca of Dudley, MA is a best-selling author...and an obvious fraud.
I had never heard of Ms. Defonseca's autobiography, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, until I read about it in the Boston Globe-Democrat this morning. This "true story" is a huge hit in Europe, has been translated into 18 languages and the French have made it into a film. If an unrelated lawsuit hadn't stopped US publication, the book would be sitting next to "The Audacity Of Hope" on bookshelves across America.
In the book, 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. A 2001
story in The Boston Globe raised questions about the book's veracity, but Defonseca insisted that it was all true. [emphasis added]
Here's a hint: Any book that features the storyline "was raised by a pack of wolves" should immediately go in the "Fiction" section.
If you are a rational person, you won't be surprised to learn that, not only is Misha's story of being raised by wolves untrue, but this little Jewish girl wasn't able to roam in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto at will because a) she was in Belgium at the time; and b) she's not Jewish.
The author now insists that "the story in the book is mine. It is not the actual reality - it was my reality." It's a line that was no doubt well received in the English Lit Department at Harvard. In fact, it summarizes the philosophy of the modern Left on issues from global warming to the threat of Islamism: "Just because what I say isn't true doesn't mean I'm wrong."
Personally, I think Dan Rather and CBS News should sue Ms. Defonseca. Isn't "Fake But Accurate" their line?
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