“Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years” might be a fantastic novel to read but it infuriates me that this woman wrote this book and claimed it to be truth but is now saying that it is not. A book that is written as fiction is taken as such, but a book that is written as a Mémoire is taken as some sort of truth. There are fictional books written about the Holocaust that can teach us and help us remember the Holocaust but no one is claiming that any of the experiences that happen in a fictional book actually happened.
In a Mémoire, it is supposed that most of what the person is writing about is some truth, it is true that most survivors or most people who talk about their life experiences won’t remember every detail but overall their story is truth. This woman wrote a Mémoire and than after it had sold thousands of copies she came out and said that it wasn’t an actual event in her life but rather her own reality. In my opinion she lied about an event and wrote a book about it and then revealed the truth. The Holocaust is not an event that one should fabricate, if she wanted to write this book, as I have heard it is really good, she should have claimed it fiction. I really believe that fiction novels about the Holocaust are important, but then it begs the question that if someone can fabricate an experience, and writes about it as a truth, then what makes all the Holocaust survivors who tell their stories important?
My father was born in Germany and was a very small baby when his parents escaped Germany right after Hitler came to power before the Jews began to lose their rights and their lives, however the rest of his family other than him and his parent did not escape. My grandparents died before I was born so I don’t know what happened to the rest of their family other than the fact that they died in a ghetto or in one of the camps. It hurts me that this person wrote this book and claimed it as truth until after it was published. As time goes on there will be less and less Holocaust survivors to share their stories and if someone can create this story then all of the people who believe that the holocaust didn’t happen have even more evidence to say what they believe.
While I know that a lot of authors write books about things that they have never experienced they classify them as fiction. I think that the Holocaust is an event in history that should be remembered and talked about so that it can never happen again but I think that there is a difference between surviving it and telling your story and not remembering all the details and writing a book based upon an experience that you have never had and calling it a
The Holocaust is not an event that one should fabricate a personal experience from and write about. While I acknowledge that the author said that this event was not an actual reality it was her reality, it does not change the fact that she wrote about an experience as a
1 comment:
carly,
i agree that it is sad and almost hurtful that this memoir was published fabricating the holocaust. if anything it will only tarnish the reputation of other holocaust memoirs, which are important pieces of history. it is interesting to note though that this week, the new york times had an additional story about a false memoir, one in which a young girl wrote about her life as an underprivileged child of gang members. in reality, she had a totally different life, kind of like this example. things like this are really disappointments. although the story i just described holds less importance in world history and affairs (i suppose this could be argued...it is a domestic problem), it only hurts the status of all memoirs more. what can we believe and when? how do we know what is true from peoples' memory? i hate to be so skeptical but i guess with so many examples of fake memoirs recently (james frye, etc) it is hard not to question sometimes.
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