- Edited
The documentary Misha and the Wolves (2021, Belgium/UK).
Where to see it:
It's available on Netflix.
Description:
A Belgian-American woman writes a popular Holocaust memoir describing herself as a Jewish girl being raised by wolves in the forest while searching for her parents who had been taken away by the Nazis. The book is then made into a movie. Just as Oprah is about to add it to her book club, internet researchers and journalists curious about details that don't make sense, identify her real name and her Catholic family and the work is labeled as a hoax.
Caution: spoilers ahead.
Although arrested and killed by Nazis for being a member of the Belgian resistance, her father allegedly gave up the names of other members of the resistance during torture, leading to their deaths and to his name being removed from monuments and called a traitor. The daughter Misha then moved to the US, changed her last name, and joined a Synagogue although she was not Jewish and never converted. One day she told a friend at Shul that she was raised by wolves in the forest after her parents were taken away by the Nazis. The friend encouraged her to write a memoir and get it published. She hired a ghostwriter and did so. The memoir mixes up a little reality with much falsehoods and fantasy, including her false claims that her family were Jewish victims of the Nazis instead of Catholic victims of the Nazis. The book then became popular in Europe and also sold about 5000 copies in the US. There also were some legal issues between her and her ghostwriter involving a judge deciding the book was worth $25 million, based on potential value of future films etc.
After everything fell apart, and confronted with proof her story is made up, she gave this explanation to a Belgian newspaper (translated using google):
Yes, my name is Monique De Wael, but since I was four years old, I have wanted to forget it. My parents were arrested when I was four years old. I was taken in by my grandfather, Ernest De Wael, then by my uncle, Maurice De Wael. They called me “the traitor’s daughter” because my father was suspected of having spoken under torture at the Saint-Gilles Prison. Apart from my grandfather, I hated those who welcomed me. They treated me badly. I felt different. It's true that I have always felt Jewish and later, in my life, I was able to reconcile with myself by being welcomed by this community.
So, it's true that I've always told myself about a life, another life, a life that cut me off from my family, a life far from the men I hated. This is also why I became passionate about wolves, why I entered their world. And I mixed it all up. There are times when it is difficult for me to differentiate between what was reality and what my inner world was.
This book, this story, is mine. It is not the real reality, but it has been my reality, my way of surviving. At first, I didn't want to publish it and then I let myself be convinced by Jane Daniel. I was made to believe, and I believed it, and it was true, that it would appear as a message of life. I ask for forgiveness from all those who feel betrayed, but I implore them to put themselves in the place of a little four-year-old girl who has lost everything, who must survive, who plunges into an abyss of loneliness and to understand that I I never wanted anything other than to ward off my suffering.
I told myself about a life, another life. I ask for forgiveness.
The documentary interviews both the woman herself and people who know her. A woman from a wolf sanctuary tells a story indicating Misha actually somehow is an expert in wolf behavior. Maybe she did live with wolves after all at some point? Her family really was killed by Nazis. So some of her story is true, but most of it is false. She maintains that although the story is not "real", it is in some way her personal "reality".
Is she depravedly evil? A shrewd con artist? Mentally ill? A normal person who made some mistakes after going through childhood trauma? All open and perhaps unanswerable questions in this trial by documentary.
I personally think this woman has shamefully disrespected her parents and their sacrifice and the less attention any one pays to her the better. Because of this I have decided to shelve the screening of this film. The information is left so no one will say things are being censored.