In 1995, an author by the name of Benjamin Wilkomirski published a book called Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood. Fragments tells a shocking and incredible tale about a young boy's Holocaust experience. The descriptions are violent, graphic, gritty and realistic. In telling of his experience, Wilkomirski seems to shatter the dangerous assumption that small children are inacapable of memory.
There is a problem with Wilkomirski's memoirs, however. A Swiss author named Daniel Ganzfried declared the book a fraud in August of 1998. Much of the known evidence seems indeed to suggest that Benjamin Wilkomirski is not Benjamin Wilkomirski at all, but a Swiss born Protestant named Bruno. Wilkomirski spent part of his childhood in an orphanage and was later taken in by Swiss foster parents. He claims that before the orphanage, he suffered at the hands of the Nazis in Auschwitz. These so-called "memories" are highly suspicious because it wasn't until his adulthood that Wilkomirski remembered them. Wilkomirski claims his foster parents forced him to repress these memories throughout his childhood, and he was only able to access them again with the help of a therapist. However, in Fragments, he never mentions specific dates or places. It was only after publication that Wilkomirski said he was imprisoned at Auschwitz. And the violence he describes is so horrific that it seems virtually impossible for anyone to have survived it. In an article in the New Yorker, respected historian Saul Friedlander was doubtful that Wilkomirski could have lived through the extraordinary violence he writes about.
The irony is that Fragments was embraced by critics, Holocaust historians, survivors and general readers, who even hailed it as a masterpiece and a classic. Labeling it a memoir troubles many survivors and historians, who suggest re-categorizing Fragments as a fiction. After all, as the author Aharon Appelfeld said, a novel can be truthful without being factual. Wilkomirski's book is an excellent example of what many Jewish children probably experienced; but to claim that experience as his own somehow robs the true victims of their own suffering.
Indeed, there are serious implications to fabricating a story about a tragic event like the Holocaust. Daniel Granzfried believes Wilkomirski is using the Holocaust to explain his hazy and troubled background, to fill in gaps that he doesn't remember about his early childhood. "The issue is boredom," he says. "There is this void, and then you can fill it - with the Holocaust." Granzfried is himself a Holocaust survivor, and takes offense that Wilkomirski would be so presumptuous as to falsely victimize himself. The controversy surrounding Wilkomirski suggests that inventing the Holocaust does it as much injustice as denying it. As the New Yorker journalist wrote of the situation, "Every time we fail to use words with care for their truthfulness, the honesty of everything we use words to express becomes progressively forsaken." Someone who makes up a story about surviving the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century devalues that experience for those who actually lived through it. By lying, Wilkomirski has "borrowed memories and outright stolen memories." In doing so, he has served no one but himself.
For more information on the controversy and an excellent discussion of the situation, go to your local library and read the following article that appeared in The New Yorker:
Gouveritch, Philip, "The Memory Thief," The New Yorker, Vol. 75, Num. 15, June 14, 1999, pp. 48 - 68.
Or read Wilkomirski's book:
Wilkomirski, Benjamin, Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, New York, Shocken Books, 1995. ISBN: 0-8052-4139-6
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