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Goucester Daily Times
Tuesday August 28, 2008

Local publisher has hearing today over bogus Holocaust memoir

A Gloucester publisher will be back in court today to argue her case regarding a fraudulent Holocaust memoir and push to have a $32.4-million judgment against her and her Mount Ivy Press dismissed.

In 1997, Jane Daniel of Gloucester and the Mount Ivy Press published "Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years" — a story about a young Jewish girl, Misha Defonseca, and her harrowing tale of survival during the Nazi's reign in Germany and World War II.

The book, which was written by Defonseca's ghost writer, Vera Lee, became a best-seller in Europe, was translated into 18 languages, was turned into a feature film in France, and drew interest from the Walt Disney Co. and Oprah Winfrey.

In 2001, Defonseca and Lee sued Daniel for breach of contract in a dispute over the handling of the profits. The jury awarded Defonseca and Lee a $32-million settlement against Daniel.

Defonseca, however, later admitted the book was not true after a genealogical researcher working with Daniel uncovered inconsistencies in Defonseca's story. Defonseca, as it turns out, never lived with wolves to escape the Nazis, never killed a German soldier in self-defense, never walked 3,000 miles across Europe in search of her parents — and contrary to the book's claims, Defonseca admitted in February that she isn't even Jewish.

The researcher and Daniel found records that showed that Defonseca was baptized Catholic and had attended an elementary school in Schaarbeek, Belgium, in 1943 — a time in which she said in her book she was living with wolves in Ukraine.

"This is a case where everyone was so enamored and felt so much sympathy for the Holocaust survivor, it just overwhelmed everyone in the case, including the jury," Daniel said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Now to find out that the book was not true, that is fraud on the court."

Daniel says she never would have been ordered to pay Defonseca and her ghost writer $32.4 million over her handling of profits had the jury known the book was filled with lies.

Joe Orlando, a Gloucester attorney, was hired by Daniel in March for the express purpose to file a complaint to vacate the prior 2001 verdict.

Orlando said yesterday that Defonseca and Lee filed the initial lawsuit saying the Mount Ivy Press didn't do good job promoting the book and as a result she lost millions of dollars.

"A jury listened to this sad tale of seven-year-old Misha trekking thousands of miles through war-ravaged Europe, living with wolves and killing a Nazi soldier," Orlando said. "A jury awarded the money and a judge tripled it. So you're dealing with a judgment based on fraud and based on perjured testimony.

"This is the biggest abuse of the judicial system that I have witnessed in my 30 years as a trial lawyer," he added.

After news of the hoax, Orlando filed a complaint on Daniel's behalf to vacate the seven-year-old judgment, but Defonseca filed a motion to dismiss that complaint. A judge will hold a hearing on Defonseca's motion today in Middlesex Superior Court.

"The hope is that the judge denies their motion so (Daniel)'s complaint can move forward and we can go into discovery and take depositions," said Orlando.

He said both Defonseca and Lee made claims that the memoir was true and signed a contract with Mount Ivy Press guaranteeing that the content of the memoir was true.

"This is critically important," said Orlando. "They held it out as the actual account of her life, so that contract was void at the beginning."

Defonseca and Lee, however, say the truth of the 1997 book had no bearing on the jury's finding that Daniel cheated them out of profits.

"It has nothing to do with that," said Defonseca, 71, of Dudley. "This credibility issue is something Jane is digging up now. That's not what the trial was about. It was about the fact that she cheated us."

Daniel met Defonseca in the 1990s while Daniel was doing publicity for a video company that had made a memorial video for Defonseca about her dog.

"She said the reason she was so attached to dogs is because she had been so attached to wolves," Daniel recalled. Once she heard Defonseca tell her story, she asked her to write a book.

But the book sold only 5,000 copies in the United States after Daniel had a falling out with Defonseca and Lee. In 2001, a Middlesex District Court jury found that Daniel had failed to promote the book as promised and had hidden profits. The jury awarded Defonseca $7.5 million and Lee $3.3 million — the amounts tripled by the judge who found Daniel had misled both women and tried to claim royalties herself by rewriting the book.

In a brief telephone interview, Defonseca would not discuss her admission that she made up most of the details of the book. In February, she acknowledged that her book was a fantasy that she kept repeating.

"This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," Defonseca said in a statement released by her lawyers.

Lee's attorney, Frank Frisoli, said too much time has gone by for Daniel to challenge the verdict now. Also, after the judgment, Daniel reached agreements with both Lee and Defonseca to settle with Daniel for far less than $32.4 million.

Daniel said her father paid $425,000 to Defonseca, while Lee received $250,000 from a settlement Daniel received.

Lee said that she warned Daniel several times during the writing of the book that some aspects of Defonseca's story were incredible, but that Daniel dismissed her concerns.

"I think she went along thinking she had a blockbuster and she didn't want to hear anything about it not possibly being true," Lee said.

When news of the hoax came out in February, however, Lee said that she had always believed Defonseca's stories and that no research she did gave her a reason to do otherwise.

"She always maintained that this was truth as she recalled it, and I trusted that that was the case," Lee said then.

Daniel, meanwhile, has said she could not fully research Defonseca's story before it was published because the woman claimed she did not know her parents' names, her birthday or where she was born.

Daniel acknowledges she had doubts about portions of Defonseca's story, but said she believed it after talking to Holocaust survivors.

"If you read a lot of Holocaust literature, all survivor stories are miraculous," she said.

Gail McCarthy can be reached at gmccarthy@gloucestertimes.com

Orlando & Associates
One Western Avenue
Gloucester, MA 01930
(978) 283 - 8100
fax:  (978) 283- 8507
email: firm@orlandoassociates.com