Book Review: Surviving With Wolves/Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years by Misha Defonseca

 

I know I rarely tackle books about such serious subjects, but I just had to get some words off of my chest about this book. Let’s have a look at Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years or Surviving with Wolves, depending on what release you're reading.

This "autobiographical" book tells the story of the Jewish girl Misha, who loses both her parents due to World War Two. She is taken in by another family that doesn’t treat her very kindly, and eventually decides to look for her parents in “the East”. This book chronicles the hardships she went through, traveling all the way from Belgium to Eastern Europe on her own and eventually making her way back.

I was really into this book. You felt so hard for this girl and just wanted her to succeed. Granted, some parts were a bit hard to believe, but that didn’t mean they never could happen. I just wanted her to see her parents again so badly as she traveled such an impossible distance. It was written well and very descriptive, you get a real impression of the people she came across on her journey, etc.

Then I did some research into the book. And then came out the truth. It’s all a bloody lie. Yep, I’m not even kidding. Some parts were based in some form of the truth of the author’s life, but pretty much everything else is a major lie. The author never travelled across Europe and found shelter amongst wolves looking for her parents, heck, she wasn’t even Jewish, neither were they.

Is it just me, or is it beyond fucked up to lie about these things and publish your book as a legit autobiography, claiming all of it is the truth? What the hell. I don’t doubt the fact that the author went through hardships in the war, but lying about all of it to make money off of it and presenting it as honest truth… There’s definitely something wrong with that. I just feel lied to and manipulated, considering I bought this book thinking it to be honest truth. So, no, I won’t be giving this book a high score.

No matter how well-written and realistic the story was presented, for lying about all of these things, this book gets a very low rating and nothing more. I believe this is one of the lowest ratings I've ever given a book. I hope the author really does some soul-searching, because this is just fucked up. Sorry for being so angry, but this is legit harmful, especially considering she made a lot of money off the book. Ugh, well, I hope the next review is less negative.

Rating: 0.25/5