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[evocative music slowly rising]

[birds twittering]

I can still remember laying in my bed,

my little night-light on,
crying over this.

I was so overwhelmed by this story.

Misha Defonseca checked every single box

for the type of woman that we looked for
to interview on Exceptional Women.

I'll just take a beat and then turn.

I got you. Okay.

Stand by.

Her story originated in Belgium,

but she was living
in Millis, Massachusetts,

20 miles away from the radio station.

You wanna give me a countdown?

[radio producer] Three, two, one.

♪ Magic 106.7… ♪

[Candy O'Terry]
Sometimes a story is so astonishing

it seems unbelievable.

Sometimes the sadness one person feels
is so big, it's overpowering.

And sometimes courage is so monumental,
it humbles you.

[Pat Cunningham] Back in the late '80s,
we had been living in Millis for 37 years.

Pretty much everybody knew everybody.

And we had new neighbors.

They were a couple from Belgium,
Maurice and Misha.

There's a saying in Millis,
"Small town, big family."

It's a small-knit community,
and we became friends.

[cat meows and purrs]

You want a little kiss?

[Pat] Misha was a very nice person.
Very friendly, um, caring.

I had never met anybody that had
a relationship with animals as did Misha.

There were many, many cats.

[inaudible]

Eccentric personality, for sure.

I was there one day having tea,

and she told me about her life
during the war and so forth.

She went into some detail.

[Candy over radio] Let me bring you into
the life of a little girl named Misha.

She was waiting for her father
to pick her up from school one day,

and he never came.

[poignant music plays]

My mouth just dropped on the floor.

[Candy] Instead a woman tapped her
on the shoulder and said, "Come with me."

This little girl was taken into a home
with a family she didn't know.

She was given a new name
and different clothes.

[explosions]

[Candy]
When she was only seven years old,

she walked alone for years,

through Nazi-occupied countries,
across thousands of miles,

in search of her deported parents.

Misha is now a grown-up Jewish woman

living in the Boston area.
She's a Holocaust survivor.

And she's here
to tell her astonishing story

of courage and survival.

I think about my parents every day.

My mother's name was Gerusha,

and my father, Robert.

Reuven in Hebrew.

But our surname,

I don't think I ever knew.

I never discovered
what became of my parents.

Not where they went or how they died.

To this day, I do not know.

[sustained, dramatic music plays]

[director] Settle, everybody, please.

So, Misha,
tell me the story of the first time

you spoke about your experiences.

[inhales deeply]

One day…

in a synagogue…

on the occasion of Yom HaShoah,
the day of remembrance…

I was asked to talk about me and my story.

My husband convinced me to do it,

telling me it would free me.

When I went up to the bimah,

I suddenly realized that
I was going to speak for the first time.

I burst into tears.

And slowly, snatches, I began to tell.

I was cold and I had to keep going

one step at a time.

That is survival.

You have to go forward

one step at a time.

I was, like, mesmerized.

People never knew about her
being a Holocaust survivor.

I had tears in my eyes.

She was hungry. She was cold.

She was lonely. She wanted her parents.

How did this person survive?

[Misha Defonseca] I told myself,

"They think I'm alive."

"If they think I'm alive,

I can't let them down."

"So I have to keep going."

[Jane Daniel]
You could've heard a pin drop.

Everybody there was just
completely entranced with her story.

[people clamoring]

[dramatic music playing]

[Jane] I never expected that
I was gonna hear what I heard.

When Misha was seven years old,
her parents were arrested by the Nazis,

and she was told
that they had been deported.

She was placed in the care
of a Catholic family

called de Wael.

So it was a safe place for her.

They gave her a new identity,
Monique de Wael.

The deception saved her.

But she felt very alienated there.

[delicate music playing]

[Defonseca] I ended up in a family
that didn't love me.

That's the least you could say.

They hated me there.
They would call me worthless.

[Jane] There was a grandfather in that
foster family who was kindly to her.

[Defonseca] He told me
my parents were in Germany.

He showed me with a compass
that it was in the east.

So Germany didn't seem that far.

[Jane] At that point,
Misha made a tremendous decision.

It turned her whole life upside down.

She decided, at the age of seven,

she was going to walk to Germany
to find her parents.

[pants]

[Jane] So she took her little compass
and took some supplies

and started heading east.

I know exactly what I need.

I need the basic.

I need food, something to drink,

to have a knife for protection.

The first night I slept below a bridge.

It was not far from home.

[pants]

It was absolutely naive
when I think about it today.

On the map, Belgium seemed really small,
and Germany was really close.

But if I went back, what would I find?

[cries echoing]

[Defonseca]
Nothing was waiting for me back there.

And I had the idea to find my parents.

So I had to finish it.

[panting]

Each time I approach a village,
I see devastation.

[Jane] What she experienced as a child,

having to hide from the Nazis,

being alone in the forest,

having to steal food,

freezing temperatures…

She had had a nightmare childhood.

She had been traumatized by this.

[Defonseca] Killing…

I saw killing.

[inaudible]

[Defonseca] The dead people.

It was really desperate.

[plaintive music playing]

[Defonseca]
I dreamed of seeing my parents.

So I stayed deeply in the woods
away from the war.

[Jane] When she was in the woods,

she was away from people
being sent to concentration camps.

She was away from the horror
that was happening in the cities.

[plaintive music continues]

-[Jane] She was with birds and flowers.
-[bird chirping]

She said that's what saved her.

[Defonseca]
I completely gave in to the wildlife.

I saw this wonderful world with animals…

in peace,

living normally,

eating just what they need,

not killing more than they need.

The balance was so… just right.

With animals I didn't need any words.

We were near each other

in silence

and understood without words.

[Jane] I was thinking,
"This would make a fascinating book."

It was the early '90s.

I had a small publishing company.

When I say small, I mean tiny.

And I was looking around
for a new project.

I was the first one
that came along and said,

"Could we make this even more public?"

"Can we take this to another level?"

"I could probably
make something big out of this."

"There's a market for this story."

Because it had an amazing twist.

[panting]

I remember I had just been caught
by a farmer

who saw me stealing food from his farm.

[panting continues]

I run away, full of fear.

And he ran after me.

When you run for your life,
you run very hard.

[panting continues]

And suddenly,

I had the impression
that somebody was watching me.

I turn around and…

[twig snaps]

And I see this magnificent animal.

To me, it was like a huge dog.

The wolf seemed alone
and I needed a companion.

-[wolf howling]
-It was a beautiful gray she-wolf.

[howling]

I look in my bag for something to eat,

and I give a piece to the wolf.

And she doesn't take.

[pensive music plays]

[Defonseca] It takes a lot of time,

but after a while,
we would walk in parallel.

I was able to see its generosity…

to appreciate the strength it had.

I was able to live with it.

She was like a mother to me.

Much later, it was a whole pack of wolves.

I don't know how long I was with them.

They accepted me and protected me.

That was an amazing twist in her story.

It was like, "Who ever hears of that?"

"Wow, this is quite a story."

[Joni Soffron] Misha was very different
from most people I'd ever met.

My first impression was,

"She probably should've been an animal."

"Or her spirit is an animal."

She spoke about being accepted by the pack
but being treated as a low-ranking member

and that she had to exhibit
submissive, low-ranking behavior

in order to, uh… to be with them.

Misha said the alpha male
typically would eat first.

The others would lay around the carcass
waiting for their turn.

They would leave little scraps,

sort of in close proximity
to where she was

when they were finished.

[Defonseca]
Wolves eat ten kilos in one meal.

The leftovers
were more than enough for me.

Get it.

Go get your dinner. It's right there.

[Soffron] We became very good friends.

You got it.

-You got it. Good girl!
-[Soffron] She visited multiple times.

She would hand-feed them
the pieces of meat.

I think they sensed in Misha

that she was a friend,
as opposed to a foe.

She had such a sense of being with them,

that it's like she belonged in there.

[evocative music playing]

[Defonseca]
I had no reason to stop walking.

It's what I did every day.

[panting]

Day after day, month after month.

I have always the hope to find my parents,

because I figure,
"I have survived till now,

and if I have survived as a child,
my parents must have survived."

And this belief makes me continue.

[howls]

[Jane] I thought,
this is a moral narrative.

It's the battle between good and evil,
the innocent child and the evil Nazis.

And the child survived.

It had mythic qualities to it.

And it could take my publishing company,
Mount Ivy Press,

from a little local happening

to a worldwide happening.

So I asked Misha if she would be
interested in publishing her stories.

I brought it up very tentatively.

With everything I went through,

I'd learned to mistrust people.

[Jane] I don't think
she was terribly impressed with me,

and there was no reason she should be.

The kind of book I had published
before was a legal financial book,

not exactly her kind of thing.

[Defonseca]
For more than two years I refused,

but my community and my friends
said to me, "Misha, do it."

"For future generations."

I found myself in hell again.

[uneasy music playing]

[Jane] It was a painful process,

but it was as if she was compelled
to tell her story.

As if it was some kind of a catharsis.

Everybody was stepping up.

All the foreign publishers,
one after another, after another.

We were selling the translation rights
all over the world.

[tense music playing]

[Jane]
My agent came back from California,

and said, "Disney wants this.
Period. They want this."

This was a case of a hot property.

[The Oprah Winfrey Show
theme song playing]

[audience cheers]

[Jane] When the book was published
in April 1997,

I said, "Let's see
if we can get Oprah to do this."

Okay, this is one of my all-time
favorite moments I'm having on television.

[Jane] At that time,
Oprah had her book club.

If you were one of Oprah's books,

you had a guaranteed sale
of a million books.

It was like… That was the jackpot.

Then we'll meet back here in a month,
and we'll talk…

[Jane] And they said,
"We're interested."

I love it!

So that's a big, big, big deal.

And we were beginning to say,

"We are heading into
a monster bestseller here."

[Soffron] Jane Daniel told me that Oprah
was considering doing the Misha story,

and could they send a production crew here
to film Misha in with a wolf.

So, I said, "Yes, of course."

I told Misha
before we went into the enclosure,

this was an adult wolf,
he was a very big boy.

His name was Petro.

[low growl]

[Jane] Nobody went in but Misha.

The sound man had his boom over the fence.
He didn't go in.

[laughs]

So, Misha squatted down,
and she's feeding this one wolf cheese.

And the wolf is very friendly.

Everything's going fine.

And then the wolf decides
to put his paws on her shoulders.

[growl]

[Soffron] Petro jumped up
on her shoulders,

and he was much taller than she.

And then all of a sudden, very quickly,
the wolf opened his mouth…

[growls]

[tense music playing]

[Soffron]
…and put her whole head in his mouth.

Very gently.

Fangs on both temples.

[Defonseca] I felt no fear.

Nobody talked about
the big bad wolf to me, you know.

The wolf held her head for a minute.

We've stopped breathing.

Oprah's producer with her eyes like…

[Jane] And then
just as fast as it happened,

it was over.

And at that point,
Misha rears back, lets out a big howl.

I get goosebumps telling this story.

From the back,
way back in the back of the pen,

we hear…

[wolf howls]

…an "awoo" coming back.

When she howled,
they immediately howled back.

[howling]

[Jane] There it was. You could see.

There's the connection
between the human and the wolf.

[howling continues]

I saw it, you know. It was amazing.
It was a shocking moment.

So, they had got a lot
of really interesting wolf footage,

and I thought,
"This is gonna make a great Oprah show."

The next step was that she was to go
to Chicago for the studio portion.

[Soffron] Things were going
swimmingly well.

And then, I began to see some tension

between Misha and Jane.

[sighs]

It wasn't very pleasant as time went on.

[Pat] The book wasn't selling very well,

so Misha and Maurice, her husband,
were having financial difficulties.

So then she started selling things,
from her house.

And, um…

I felt bad
that they were losing everything.

[Karen Schulman] She kept saying,
"I have no money. I have nothing."

"Jane Daniel's no good."

I felt saddened,

but then Misha was sitting at my table
one night and said to me

she didn't wanna go on Oprah Winfrey.

I said, "Gee, Misha,
I don't understand that."

[Jane] All of a sudden,
Misha's not cooperative,

doesn't return phone calls,
has one objection after another.

She doesn't wanna go, it's inconvenient,

she needs somebody
to take care of her animals at home.

[cats meowing, purring]

[Defonseca] Jane made me so mad,
so insecure.

My husband said many times to her,

"With a survivor,
you don't use that kind of attitude."

[speaking indistinctly]

[Jane] Come on. It's Oprah.

You find a dog-sitter
or a pet-sitter or whatever.

You make yourself available.

"No."

[purring]

[Defonseca] Well, the memory,
the bad memory, came back.

I have a nightmare. I was very anxious.

[cat yowls]

[Jane] We tried everything.

I wrote her notes and said,
"This is a million sales."

"No. No. No."

-[meows]
-[whispers indistinctly]

I thought, "This is crazy."

"Any other author would be
falling all over themselves to do this."

[sighs]

It never happened.

-[church bell tolling in distance]
-[thunder rumbling]

[Jane] A year after the book came out,

there's a knock on the door,
and I'm handed a big package.

It's Misha filing a lawsuit against me.

It's like, "Oh, my God."
And at that point, everything stopped.

No other country
wanted to do business with us.

We had a lawsuit attached to this project.

[Ramona Hamblin]
The first time I met Misha,

I felt very compelled
by the circumstances of the case.

[tense music playing]

It was clear to me

that several things had, um, been done
that were improper, illegal, fraudulent.

Misha was asking for the return
of the copyright to her name

and for all of the royalties
that she was due for book sales.

Jane Daniel saw in my life a gold mine,

and she took advantage of it.

[Hamblin]
There was so much anger and bitterness

between the parties
by the time that I got involved,

there was not much room for negotiation.

And it was clear
we were gonna be going to trial.

It wasn't gonna settle out of court.

[sinuous music playing]

[Soffron] The sense in the courtroom
was a lot of drama.

The atmosphere was pretty tense.

And then, of course, the money comes up.

[Hamblin] We found that Jane Daniel had
set up a company in the Turks and Caicos,

so that royalties that came from overseas

went directly into her account
and never paid royalties on them.

We had documentation.

We had royalty statements
to show that she was paid.

We had canceled checks
that showed that she was paid.

So everything she was saying,
we had documentation to refute.

But she could speak no falsehood.

You know, "Where's the money?"
And I think the jury was very sympathetic.

[sinuous music continues]

[Hamblin] The jury was riveted.

In front of you is a person
who'd survived the Holocaust as a child

and written a memoir about it.

They were engaged
and absolutely enthralled by this story.

Misha was a good witness.

All what I lived is on the manuscript,

because it's my life.

[sinuous music continues]

[Jane huffs]
It just made me look like a monster.

And I thought, "This is not going well."

Jane was always fighting.
She enforced what she want.

[Jane] It was a ten-day trial,
and it was grueling.

The judge asks the jury,
"How do you find on count one?"

The jury found unanimously for Misha
on all counts.

I mean, ultimately, they came in
with a massive judgment against me.

It was kind of mind-boggling
to hear the number.

22.5 million.

So it was a very large verdict.

[sighs]

I am an optimistic person,
but that hit me like a ton of bricks.

I was blown away.

[chuckles]

I said, "Are you kidding me?"

[tense music playing]

[Hamblin] The money damages
against Jane Daniel

were largely based
on Jane Daniel's testimony.

This was gonna be on Oprah,
there was some contract with Disney.

There were things
that Jane Daniel testified to

to really elevate the level of damages

well beyond what would seem
supportable for a book like this.

So everybody paid attention.

People love a big verdict.

[Jane] Disney had fallen through.
Oprah had fallen through.

There were no millions of dollars.

It's an untenable position to be in.

A cruel exploiter
of an innocent Holocaust survivor.

You know,
your world falls apart at that point.

-[birds squawking in distance]
-[rain pattering softly]

[Jane] After the trial,

this was the lowest point in my life.

I ended up going into therapy
and being diagnosed with PTSD.

And I had horrible insomnia.

I was hanging on by my fingernails.

My publishing company was gone.

The copyright was taken away from me.

I mean, I was destroyed at that point.

I ended up doing a post-mortem
on what had happened,

looking at it piece by piece by piece.

I was in my lawyer's office
going through old records and documents.

I had no idea what I was gonna find.

I open a file,
and it's Misha's bank account.

And it's in Misha's writing,
and it's her signature card.

And on there, it says…

[dramatic sting]

…date and place of birth,
filled in in Misha's hand,

and mother's maiden name.

All of a sudden, I suddenly get a flash.

[tense, shrill music playing]

[Jane] She knows who she is.

She knows where she was born.

[chilling music]

[Jane] She knows who her mother was.

This was stuff she supposedly didn't know.
She lost her identity in the war.

This doesn't add up.

[tense music intensifies]

[Jane] Clearly, she knew a lot more
about who she was

than what she had told me.

What else might not be true?

I had been owned by courts and lawyers.

[panting]

My life had been turned upside down.

I wanted my life back.

[music fading away dramatically]

[Jane] If I can prove that she's not
who she's been saying she is,

I can overturn this judgment.

[rain pattering softly]

It was the dead of winter.
The days were short.

I was standing in my kitchen,

and I thought, "I have to do something.
I have to do something."

[suspenseful music plays]

[Jane] I started recalling
all the things that had happened.

How I had met her, what had happened then,
what happened this…

How did the lawsuit come about?

And then I thought,

"I'll write a book about the case.
I'll do it as a blog."

I was writing my memoir of her memoir.

And maybe somebody will read it.

Talk about a long shot.

[keyboard clacking]

The next day, I get up,

I turn on my computer,
and there's an e-mail.

And the e-mail says…

[Sharon Sergeant]
"I think I might be able to help find out

what's the real story."

I did a timeline of Misha
from a variety of photographs.

First from the book,

and then from other images
on the Internet.

So I could get a sense of her life.

I wanted to know who she was.

Who is this person
that has just ruined my life?

Each photograph I tried to analyze

and see what kind of information
I could squeeze out of it.

[suspenseful music playing]

The first clue was
Misha claims she was seven years old

when she was taken in
by this foster family.

In the American book
there was a series

of what they call polyphoto images.

And the polyphotos were taken
at that time.

And I looked at the photos,
and I said, [clicks tongue]

"No, this doesn't look like a 7-year-old."

"This looks like a toddler,
a three or four-year-old."

Big bow in her hair,
frilly clothes and chubby, chubby cheeks.

Something's wrong.

[suspenseful music rising]

The next photograph I looked at

was a picture who Misha said was
her foster grandfather and grandmother.

According to the narrative,
he's a rustic farm man.

I did a close-up of the hands
of Grandfather, which were manicured.

Did not look like a farm person's hands.

And he had a ring on one of his fingers.

Yeah, it was not the kind of thing
a farmer would wear.

And then the little dog
on Grandmother's lap,

that looks like a little house dog,
not a farm dog.

So I thought, "Gee, that's strange."

And that's when I started comparing
the French and the American book.

I was looking at names
and places and dates.

That was the big red flag.

[Jane] She called me and she said,

"Do you notice that Misha's name
that she used in the French book

is different from the name
she used in the American book?"

In the American book,
the name that she was given

by the foster family that took her in
was de Wael.

What Sharon noticed immediately is
the French book,

the foster family gave her
the name Valle, V-A-L-L-E.

Why would you have two different names?

[suspenseful music continues]

[Sharon] There's too many discrepancies,

between the name changes,
the pictures, and so on.

[music climaxes]

Fishy, yep. Definitely seemed fishy.

[director] Take a drink if you want.
Just relax.

I know it's a nerve-wracking thing.

[Jane] If her story were true
and I were doubting it…

there's something particularly

vicious

to

doubt somebody who's telling the truth

about something awful
that happened to them

and the callousness that it takes to say,
"I don't believe you."

And the harm you can cause by doing that.

That was in my mind.

On the other hand,
what was also in my mind is,

"So many discrepancies."

Why would you be saying things
that aren't true, unless you're crazy?

Maybe she's so traumatized
that she's just lost her grip on reality.

How much did that explain? I didn't know.

I needed a lot of answers at that point.

We need boots on the ground in Belgium.

[train car whirring]

[tense music playing]

[Jane] Sharon had a connection
with a Belgian genealogist

who herself was a Holocaust survivor.

As it turns out,

she grew up in the same area
that Misha claims to have lived in.

During the war,
I myself was a hidden child.

I went to a Catholic school,

and I became a very good
little Belgian, Catholic girl.

I have no recollection
of anybody telling me

what happened to my parents.

I have no memory at all.

[gentle, dramatic music playing]

I was about 40 and went through
a sort of terrible breakdown…

which led me to find
what happened to me, in fact,

and to my parents and my family.

And I started to make research.

I found out my father was deported
to Auschwitz in September '42.

My mother was arrested
in October in Brussels

and deported to Auschwitz.

I was told that they didn't come back.

So, I went by car to Auschwitz.

I saw the camp…

where there was not a single soul.

The chamber…
The gas chambers were exploded.

I found some candles,
what we call Jahrzeit,

still burning in the rubbles
of some of the gas chambers.

Before leaving,

I had a Star of David done
in dried flowers.

I just didn't know…

where to put it.

I couldn't put it at the monument.

So, finally, I chose the…

the little pond.

It floated there.

And I think that was the time that I…

[swallows]

[softly] Sorry.

Sorry.

[swallows]

…that I put my parents to rest.

My parents, my grandmother, my cousin.

[Jane] Evelyne is herself
a Holocaust survivor

whose story was very much like Misha's.

So she was the perfect person
to find what was going on.

[tense music playing]

[Sharon] In the French book,
the foster family had a surname of Valle.

And in the American book
the foster family's surname was de Wael.

To reconcile the name changes,

Evelyne went through the city directories

for the 1930s, 1940s.

[Evelyne] I came at least three days

searching for the de Waels and the Valles.

The name Valle was not in the phone books.

The Valle name didn't exist.

De Wael, yes.

There were many de Wael.
Many, many, many, many.

[Jane] So, now you start to think,

the French book
was distributed in Belgium,

and if something about Misha's story
is not true,

it would be important for her not to put
her real name in that French book.

There would be somebody over there

who would say,
"I knew the de Wael family."

"I know whether or not she was around,
or did she disappear during the war."

[Sharon] The fact that she changed
the name in France and Belgium

from de Wael to Valle,

suggests to me
that she's trying to hide something.

[Jane] Sharon and I
both looked at this and said,

"Something's really wrong
with this story."

So, at this point, the book had been
taken over by a French publisher,

who had published it in 20 languages.

It was a huge bestseller all over Europe.

She was speaking to schoolchildren
all over the French-speaking world.

[Marie-Claire Mommer speaking French]
In 2005,

I was planning on creating

as a professor of psychology

a project on the story of this young child

who experienced all these adventures.

The project became a huge,
magnificent exhibition.

Then we have the idea

to try and bring her to Belgium.

We watched her get out of the train.

It was a fascinating sight.

She was dressed in blue…

like a shining canary

with all its colors…

[chuckles]

…with two,

no, three big suitcases!

She came towards me

all radiant and beaming.

Right away, she exhibits

a very dynamic character,

very welcoming and very generous.

When Misha entered the exhibition,

she collapsed.

[applause]

[Defonseca, in French]
I was not warned of this,

so when I visited the exhibition,

I burst into tears

because it touched me very deeply.

[Mommer, in French]
She was so delighted to be there.

But on the other hand,

we saw the sadness come out

and the tears, the tears, the tears.

It was very emotional.

[in French] We were all
really traumatized by her story

and we all wanted to give

a bit of joy to this woman

by showing our creativity

and our courage, too,

to show what we felt.

[Jane, in English] In the book,
Misha says that her parents

were arrested together
by the Nazis and deported.

Although she didn't know their surname,

their first names were Reuven and Gerusha.

So, the next step was, Sharon said,

"I have access
to the Nazi records of deportations."

"Well, I will take those two names

and see if there are two people
who were deported

more or less simultaneously
with those names."

[Sharon] When we examined
the deportation lists,

they were not found as a husband and wife.

[Defonseca, in French]
"I missed my parents terribly."

"My face was covered in mud."

"I screamed…

some nights, from the cold."

"Later on,

I got a second chance."

"I survived because I trusted no one."

"Because I avoided contact with humans."

[tense music rising]

[Evelyne, in English] During the war,
the Jewish Defence Committee

had made lists of hidden Jewish children

with the name of their rescuer
and the name of their parents.

These lists are now in the archives
at the War Victims Services.

It was a real, real, real danger

that these lists
would be taken by the Nazis.

Children would be found,

and be, uh, killed.

But it was quite clever.

There were four different booklets.

You needed all four to find the child.

But all four of them
were in different places.

If any Nazi found a single booklet,

they would not be able to trace the child,

but at the end of the war,

with the four different booklets,

there would've been a way to find
whose child it was.

And so I searched for Misha's parents.

No names of the parents.

So, I knew there
that there was something wrong.

And in the lists of hidden children,

they didn't have "Misha,"
and they didn't have "de Wael,"

that is for sure.

She was not mentioned at all.

[tense music climaxes]

[Mommer, in French] Misha's story

had a snowball effect.

Already millions of books

had been sold.

And thereafter,

we had to work

to prepare the conferences

and get her to them.

So, we were always together.

At that time, she would often

come back to our home.

She would eat with us.

She was like a member of the family.

We had dozens of events.

Of course, we took her to them.

She was always welcomed

by the organizers

and always with a lot
of kindness and friendliness.

Everyone left the conferences

dazzled by this character.

[Evelyne, in English] I was stuck, really.

No findings but no proof.

No proof.

So that was the point where I thought
that she could've been undocumented.

Some children were hidden

but not necessarily through organization.

As extraordinary as her story was,

I had to keep in mind

that she might have been
a Jewish hidden child.

[TV show music playing]

[in French] We are going to talk
about this strange and wonderful story.

Misha Defonseca is with us. Hello.

Hello.

Thank you for coming to see us
to tell us about this story.

[Jane, in English] Now the stakes go up.
I start worrying.

I will feel a lot of guilt,
if this is true,

that I am digging into her past.

And what if it is true?

[in French] Misha Defonseca
is a witness of the Holocaust.

Hello.

[Jane, in English]
How unfair to challenge her.

And even if it's mostly true
but not quite true,

how unfair to disrespect
what she's been through.

[in French]
You have to go through all the tragedy

and all the horrors.

It's very painful.

I felt like I had been cast in a play
that I didn't audition for.

I didn't want the part.
I didn't wanna be in the play.

[in French] I have known hatred

and I have known the rage to kill

because it's my life or his.

It was devouring me.

[in French] Personally…

I live it every day.

This had taken over my own life.

[in French] I think about my parents
every day, and for me,

the Holocaust is every day.
The memory stays with you every day.

[Jane] But I'd had this judgment hanging
over my head for quite a while now.

I had lost the appeal.

I was looking at the possibility
of being completely wiped out.

So it was starting to get
pretty uncomfortable,

but I needed to get to the truth.

So, when we had no Jewish records
to support her story,

the question is,
maybe she's not even Jewish.

[Evelyne] If she's not Jewish,

then she must be, most likely, Catholic.

If she was Catholic,
perhaps she was baptized.

[Sharon] Misha Defonseca's bank record
from the trial records

said that she was born in 1937,

her mother's maiden name was Donville,

and she was born in Etterbeek.

[Evelyne] Etterbeek, a suburb of Brussels.

So, in Etterbeek,
I searched for different churches.

[Jane] So Evelyne went to the first one.
The records weren't there.

[Evelyne] Went to another one…

[Jane] No baptismal record
that matched Misha's information.

[Evelyne]
And to the third one in the area…

[Jane] As it turns out,
the church had burnt to the ground.

When we learned that,
I thought… [groans]

"We're probably sunk now,

because the records
probably were destroyed in the fire."

[Evelyne] But the offices, the presbytère,

was in an adjoining street.

They were preserved.

[inquisitive music playing]

So, Evelyne was looking
date by date by date,

all the children born in that parish.

I knew two things:

Her date of birth, 12th of May, 1937,

and the mother's name, Donville.

[music climaxes]

And in that book, I found her.

"Monica Ernestina Josephine de Wael…

daughter of
Roberti Henrici Ernesti de Wael

and Josephinae Germanae Barbarae Donvil."

The revelation was that
Misha's father's name was de Wael.

So, at that point, it seemed that
Monique de Wael was her real name.

It wasn't a name
given to her by foster parents

to hide her from the Nazis.

It seemed like
she was born Monique de Wael.

She was a Catholic.
She was baptized Catholic.

Her father was de Wael.

However, it wasn't proof conclusive.

Because in those days,
they used to take names of dead children

and give them to Jewish children,
by way of hiding them.

It was possible that the de Waels
had taken in a hidden child

and that their own child had died.

I needed further proof.

[director] So what did you do next?

[chuckles] Off the record,
this is a good question.

-[crew chuckles]
-[chuckling] What do I do next?

[Jane] Evelyne figured out, "All right,
where else can I find that proof?"

She would've gone to school.

I tried to find a school on the tram track
that she mentioned in her book.

[chuckles] And as I walked by,
I hit the school.

The door was open.

I walked in and asked

if they had any record of someone
with the name of Monique de Wael.

[Jane] So, we're biting our fingernails,

to the point that
they're practically bleeding,

waiting for this information.

Either we've got the records or we don't.

[Evelyne] And there on the register
was her name.

"De Wael, Monique."

That was really the final proof,
shall I say.

Both the baptism certificate

and her attendance
in a school in Brussels.

I got to the phone, and I picked up
the phone and it was Sharon.

And Sharon could hardly contain
her excitement.

She practically screamed into the phone,

"We've got the records!
We've got the records!"

That was the smoking gun.

[intense music exploding]

[music stops]

[Jane] Now I've caught her in a lie.

My life had been contaminated…

[crewman] End board.

[Jane] …by a whole spiderweb of lies.

[director] Take 15 minutes, everybody.

[dramatic music sting]

[Jane] And here it is,
exposed as a hoax.

[Defonseca, in French] Could you pass me
a bottle of water, please?

-Thank you.
-[Jane] I thought,

"Now, the whole story that she
has been telling in the book falls apart."

[tense music rising]

At that point, I knew
she was not who she said she was.

[chuckles]

[Jane] Not only was she not a Jewish child

hiding in the forest from the Nazis,

she was a Catholic child
safely enrolled in school.

[growling]

She wasn't anywhere near wolves.

She was playing to an audience.
She knew exactly what she was doing.

Now we can see
that this is not just a little white fib.

This is a massive conspiracy over 20 years

to propagate something
that was a complete and total falsehood.

This was not the real Misha.

[chilling music playing]

[Evelyne] I had many feelings.

I felt angry. I felt disgusted.

I just saw the fake history,
the fake identity,

a way to get money out of the Holocaust.

Somebody stole
a very painful part of my life.

[inhales deeply]
I felt it for myself, for my…

for all the hidden children

and all the dead children
through the Holocaust.

Uh…

For all the parents,
for my parents, [inhales]

but in fact for all the Jewish community.

[evocative music playing]

[wolves barking]

[shouts in French]

[Jane] At the point
that we got those records,

the book was a huge bestseller
all over Europe

and the movie had just come out.

And the movie was called
Survival with Wolves.

[wolves barking]

[howling]

[dramatic music rising]

[speaking French]

[wolves whine, howl]

[applause]

[male host, in French] There it is,

the trailer of Véra Belmont's film.

It's very touching to see you both here,

the real person and little Mathilde.

You seem very emotional.

It's as if you are reliving this story
every time you see the film?

Yes, that's right.

That's right. It's very difficult.

Do you recognize yourself
in Mathilde's acting?

Absolutely, absolutely.

It's very well expressed.

She plays magnificently.

She conveys the emotions very well.

It was the thought of my mother
that kept me going.

There is a scene in the film

which to me is extraordinary.

The one where she falls out of the train
and she says…

[inaudible]

[haunting orchestral music taking over]

[in French] Cinema, with a beautiful film
inspired by a true story.

[in French] You're great.

-You're a great actress.
-[chuckles]

[in French]
This story is very, very moving.

An incredible story and yet a true story.

[overlapping conversations]

[haunting music climaxing]

[in French] Cut! Excellent.

[in English] It premiered in Paris.

"Based on a true story."

And here we're holding these documents.

So we thought, "Let's go with this.
Let's put it on my blog,

and let's e-mail somebody
over there in Belgium."

[tense music playing]

The next morning we got up,

it had broken front page
of all the newspapers.

[newsreader, in French]
A book, then a film,

supposedly an autobiography,
but everything was false.

[in French] It was an incredible story,
the story of a young Shoah survivor.

We had fired a truth bomb. It had landed.

[in French] Surviving with Wolves,
the bestseller that inspired the film

released last month…

And the whole fake thing blew up.

…is not a true story.

Everything is false.

It was a big scam.

[director, in English] House lights.

I came home,
I immediately went to my computer,

I put in her name and there it was.

[reporter, in French]
The beautiful story was entirely false.

In Belgium, her country of origin,

historians have discovered Misha Defonseca
is actually Monique de Wael.

I think I felt like my blood
just drained from my body, you know.

How… How can this possibly be?

I was angry.

I was sad. I was hurt.

I felt betrayed.

I felt used.

She became that close a friend to me

that when we had a litter of pups born,
we named one Misha.

It was just heartbreaking.

Absolutely heartbreaking.

-Hey, baby girl.
-[wolf whines]

We were duped, just like the rest of you.

[dramatic music playing]

[Karen] That fact that she lied
about her being a Holocaust survivor

made me cry.

Misha Defonseca played on sympathy.

That's how she became
a wonderful storyteller.

Sympathy.

That's how Misha Defonseca
was able to fool people.

Sympathy.

[delicate music playing]

[Pat] I burst into tears.

I just felt so taken advantage of
and lied to and all…

Ugh! The lies and the bitterness
and everything came out.

Some of my neighbors did give her
quite large sums of money.

We're talking $25-30,000
to help her save the house.

She'd go to the rabbis
and ask for donations from the temple.

The entire community…

that knew her, my neighbors,
nobody talked to her again that I knew of.

Everybody felt betrayed.

Yeah.

[pensive music playing]

[Mommer, in French]
There was a sort of anger that rose in me

which never left me.

The students who took part in the project,

the day I entered the class,

there was a state of revolt.

You have to imagine a pack in revolt.

Rants, tears, cries.

[exhales] They were standing up
on the benches.

I was no longer in control,

and I usually contained my students
very well.

I contacted Misha straight away.

I wanted to be honest
and authentic with her.

But she said, "Don't worry."

"It must be the doing
of the publisher in America."

[crew speaking indistinctly]

[Jane, in English] And then came
the next twist in the story.

It couldn't have gotten more bizarre.

I said to myself,
"I could never make up this plot."

If I did, somebody would say,

"This is preposterous.
This would not happen."

[Marc Metdepenningen, in French]
Every journalist dreams of a scoop.

The question for me was,

if her story is false,

then what is her real story?

What I simply did

was go through the Brussels phone book

where there are approximately
400 de Waels.

So I started to call them
one after the other.

And at the 44th or 43rd name,

I stumbled across a woman called
Emma de Wael.

[inquisitive music playing]

[Marc] My meeting with Emma, Misha's aunt,

was extraordinary.

She didn't go off
in search of her parents?

[in French] Good God, no.

She stayed with her grandfather
and grandmother.

Emma told me

her niece had always been delusional,

that she would create
imaginary worlds for herself.

I went and fetched her regularly

with the number 56 tram to Anderlecht

and brought her to Schaerbeek.

In the evenings,
I took her back to Uncle Ernest.

[tense music playing]

[gunshots]

[Marc] Emma de Wael

told me the truth

about what happened during the war.

What happened to Robert de Wael,
Misha Defonseca's father.

[soft, solemn music playing]

[man, in French] Robert de Wael
worked at Schaerbeek town hall.

He was really very patriotic

and very engaged in his role
as a reserve officer.

I met Jean-Philippe Tondeur by chance

but he had a lot of documentation

on Misha Defonseca's father.

So I went to consult
Robert de Wael's file.

[restrained, dramatic music playing]

[Tondeur] On 10th of May, 1940,
the Germans invade Belgium.

[explosion]

[Tondeur] They crush the Belgian army
during an 18-day campaign.

The king surrenders

and Belgium is occupied.

Robert de Wael joins the resistance…

[bell tolling]

…and begins to recruit
resistance fighters.

[Marc] As a resistance fighter,

Robert de Wael

was involved in gathering weapons…

activating intelligence networks

and transmitting intelligence
to the Belgian government

which had gone to London.

[beeping]

Unfortunately, Robert de Wael
wasn't very discreet

about his activities for the resistance.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Emma de Wael] He had a loose tongue.

He was proud of what he was doing.

Because I knew he had

secret documents.

He even showed them to us at home.

My father told him to be careful,

that he was becoming careless.

He risked arrest.

He was denounced by a Nazi collaborator

and was quickly arrested.

[Tondeur] Robert de Wael, his wife

and 41 arrested resistance fighters

are deported to Germany…

and sent to
the Brauweiler Prison in Cologne.

The Cologne prison
had a very harsh regime.

[Tondeur] He is interrogated
by the Gestapo.

He starts to scream.

[chilling music playing]

Robert de Wael cracks.

[Marc] Robert de Wael
made a deal in the Cologne prison.

This deal involved him

handing over the names
of his fellow resistance fighters

in exchange for his wife being protected

and to once again see his daughter,

Misha Defonseca.

[Tondeur] In August 1942,
after betraying his fellow officers,

as the Germans had demanded of him,

Robert de Wael got one last opportunity
to see his daughter.

And that would be

the end for…

for Robert de Wael,
who was later deported.

Robert and his wife Germaine
would both die in the German camps.

We called her "The Traitor's Daughter."

Because it was said that her father

sided with the Germans.

[mournful music playing]

[Tondeur] The municipality of Schaerbeek
would engrave a plaque

in the name of the resistance fighters
who died during the war.

Robert de Wael,

whose name was listed last…

was later erased.

[Marc] On 22nd of February 2008,

once things were very clear,

uh, we published
Robert de Wael's whole story,

the betrayal,

the falseness
of Misha Defonseca's account.

And in the hours that followed,

a statement was issued.

This is Misha Defonseca's statement.

[haunting music playing]

"They called me 'The Traitor's Daughter'

because my father was suspected
of having spoken under torture."

"This book,

this story, is mine."

[evocative music rising]

"It is not the actual reality,

but it was my reality…

my way of surviving."

"I ask forgiveness."

"All I ever wanted
was to exorcise my suffering."

[growling]

[in French] I felt so rejected,

but I could not explain it to myself,

neither to my grandmother
or my grandfather.

I am not the girl I thought,

but there are times…

when I still hesitate.

I say to myself,

"Did I or didn't I experience it?"

I have to think.

Particularly with animals.

Particularly with animals.

-[growling]
-I can still see myself

rolling on the ground with wolves.

[delicate music playing]

Have you seen my lovely wolves?

They will always be

my wolves.

I will be always at their side.

Even if I know the truth now.

I am at their side.

[wolves whining]

I got into a bubble,

a world of my own.

And this world of mine
was filled with animals.

Animals that defended me

against humans.

[birds twittering]

[Candy, in English]
Listening back to this interview,

the first words in the intro
to the show were…

[on radio]
"Sometimes a story's so astonishing,

-it's unbelievable."
-[mouthing along]

That's pretty astonishing. [chuckles]
That those were the first words.

And then it turns out, it's not true.

I believed her.

I didn't see anything in those eyes

that made me think
she wasn't telling me the truth.

[Defonseca on headphones] Fear for me,
at this time, was the German.

It was the…

[Candy O'Terry] All I was doing
was looking for more truth

to confirm what I already believed.

In hindsight, it's chilling.

But for me, at that moment,

I was so respectful
of someone's experience,

at what I think we all,
as citizens of the world,

will recognize was the darkest time
in the history of our world.

Far be it from me to question her.

[film projector whirring]

[Debórah Dwork] Questioning
someone's claim to be a Holocaust survivor

is very difficult.

One brings a great deal of diffidence
to those claims.

[projector stops]

But the danger of believing everything

puts history

and the historical reality

of genuine survivors at risk.

In December 1996,

I got a letter and a manuscript
from Jane Daniel.

That manuscript was Misha: A Mémoire

by a young girl during the Holocaust.

I called Jane Daniel

to explain why this narrative
just did not work.

I said to her,

"I would not publish this book."

I have thought a lot over the years

as to why Jane Daniel
decided to go forward with publication.

She clearly hoped

that the manuscript was true,

but she clearly worried that it was not.

I think it was greed

that powered this narrative

for Misha and Jane Daniel.

And then, as those sales figures rose,

more and more people

accepted the memoir as real and as true.

[Jane] I admit it,
I had created the monster.

She was my monster.

I had created this person
with enormous sympathy as a character.

Somebody who had suffered terribly.

Somebody who deserved respect
and, in fact, awe.

And nobody wants to admit
that they were tricked.

And I admit it,
I was tricked by her, I believed her.

Everybody was seduced.

The American jurisprudence system,
the judges and the juries,

we were all seduced by the story.

[Evelyne] It's human to believe.

Credibility is something else.

It's your need to question
if things are not

that will help you discern
what's true and what's not true.

[in French]
You killed a human being with a knife?

Because I saw the rape

of a little girl.

[Mommer, in French] I have enough distance

to take a more analytical look
at Misha's character.

When I saw that, I jumped

because he turned and came towards me.

At that moment,
I only thought about one thing,

to live.

Because I wanted to live.

Misha created a world for herself,

a world of her own belief.

When he was close,
I stabbed him in the stomach.

I slashed everywhere.

The throat, the face.

I was covered in blood.

It was horrible.

Writing this book

has caused me to relive…

[voice breaking] …my nightmares.

[Mommer] Misha sought refuge
in mythomania,

and with time,

she slowly becomes

a character in her own story.

Every time I stabbed,

it was for this little girl,
it was for the children,

it was for my parents.

[in English]
I think that we would like to believe

that Misha Defonseca believed

that she was a survivor of the Holocaust.

I think we would like to believe

that we were not so naive,

that we believed it
because she believed it.

And we would even like to believe

that this narrative
has a redemptive purpose,

because it made right
the wrong of her childhood.

I think it's nonsense.

There is no redemptive purpose.

We were so naive.

It was all a fabrication.

[Evelyne] How I feel about her today…

[smacks lips]

Mixed… Mixed emotions.

I think that she was a protagonist
of this story, but she was not alone.

There were other people that helped

to make this, uh,

biography be a bestseller.

[delicate music playing]

[Evelyne] Just talking about her
right now, and the search,

and the years that went by…

Some pity…

Some pity.

Uh…

Some repulsion…

Maybe it's too hard a word, but…

I'm feeling some uh, understanding.

As a child, it must have been
very difficult for her after the war,

the fact that her father
was called a traitor, a collaborator.

She's both a victim and a villain.

She's both.

She is both in this story.

[plaintive music playing]

[wolf howling, distant]

[delicate, evocative music playing]