The author of a fake memoir has been ordered to pay $22.5 million back to her publisher, the Associated Press reported.
Misha Defonseca, a Belgium-born Massachusetts woman, admitted to fabricating a best-selling memoir about experiences during World War II and the Holocaust published almost 20 years ago.
Judge Marc Kantrowitz issued what he called "the third, and hopefully last" opinion in the case April 29. It confirmed a 2012 court ruling setting aside a pervious verdict awarding 76-year-old Defonseca millions of dollars due to her publisher's "highly improper representations and activities."
According to the AP, the ruling appears to be the final chapter of a 17-year story that began when Defonseca's book "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years" was published in 1997.
The book recounts Defonseca's trek through the forests of Europe after her parents were arrested by the Nazis. Between the ages of 7 and 11, she is described to be living with wolves and fatally stabbing a Nazi soldier.
However, Defonseca was not even Jewish. Although her parents were arrested for being part of the anti-Nazi resistance, she was enrolled in Brussels school during WWII.
Defonseca, born Monica Ernestine Josephine De Wael, said her parents' arrest and her subsequent harsh treatment at the hands of relatives who took her in rationalized her to start "feeling Jewish."
"This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," Defonseca said in a statement given by her lawyers to The Associated Press after the truth came to light.
Her story was exposed in 2008 when researchers in the U.S. and Belgium claimed that they could not find evidence of her family in any Holocaust archives.
In the intervening years, the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a French feature film "Surviving with the Wolves."
"In 1998, Defonseca and her ghostwriter, Vera Lee, won a $32.4 million judgment against Mt. Ivy Press and its founder Jane Daniel over allegedly hiding profits," the AP reported.
"Daniel, who had asked Defonseca to write the book after overhearing her telling her stories at a Massachusetts synagogue, told the Associated Press in 2008 that Defonseca claimed she did not know the names of her parents, her birthday, or where she was born, making the facts difficult to check."
