Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years

Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years is a literary hoax by Misha Defonseca, first published in 1997. The book was published as a memoir telling the claimed true story of how the author survived the Holocaust as a young Jewish girl, wandering Europe searching for her deported parents. The book sold well in several countries and was made into a film, Survivre avec les loups (Surviving with the Wolves), named after the claim that Misha was adopted by a pack of wolves during her journey who protected her.

However, on 29 February 2008, Defonseca publicly admitted what many had already suspected, that her book was false. Her real name was Monique de Wael; while her parents had been taken away by the Nazis, they were not Jews but Roman Catholic members of the Belgian Resistance. She also did not leave her home during the war, as the book claims. In a statement released through her lawyers to the Brussels newspaper Le Soir, de Wael attempted to defend the hoax, claiming that the story of "Misha" "is not actual reality, but was my reality, my way of surviving" and that there were moments when she "found it difficult to differentiate between what was real and what was part of my imagination."