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Rating: 
Summary: Investigative journalism at its best
Review: This is a clear and thorough an expose of the fraud perpetrated by Bruno Grosjean Dossekker, who falsely claimed, in Fragments, to be one Binjamin Wilkomirski, a child survivor of the Holocaust. Stefan Maechler proves beyond any doubt that Wilkomirski is no such person and that Fragments is a fiction.The author pursued every possible lead. He compared each minute detail in Dossekker's narration of "events" with historical records from such leading Holocaust scholars as Raul Hilberg and Lawrence Langer, accounts of other child survivors, interviews with members of the Dossekker and Grosjean families and more. The most damning evidence Maechler unearthed is the fact that in 1981, Dossekker/Wilkomirski contested the will of Yvonne Grosjean, whom, in a letter to officials in Bern Siwtzerland, he called "my birth mother." Dossekker/Wilkomirski received a third of her estate. Other damning evidence includes Dossekker/Wilkomirski's use of Laura Grabowski to "corroborate" his story. Grabowski claims to have known him in a children's home in Krakow. In fact, Grabowski is an American citizen of Christian faith who has since her youth fabricated stories about her victimhood, the most well-publicized being a book called Satan's Underground. The Social Security number of said Lauren Stratford is the same as that of Grabowski, who subsequently used it to make a false survivor's claim. Furthermore, Satan's Underground and Dossekker/Wilkomirski's book contain startling similarities. The one problem with Maechler's work concerns his questions about how such a fraud could be perpetrated. He concludes that the volume of Holocaust material made the fraud possible. Unfortunately, this amounts to blaming the victim. There is something tawdry in blaming the commemoration and documentation of the worst crime in history for the appearance of a single fraud, or two. Holocaust historians must guard against even the unintentional falsification of the record. But documenting the history is not a problem. The problem is that any evil of the Holocaust's enormity ever needed to be documented. Alyssa A. Lappen
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book!
Review: This is the account of the real life detective work carried by the swiss historian Stefan Maechler about the authenticity
of Fragments, the (as it turned out, invented) childhood memoirs of a swiss musician claiming to be a survivor of the Nazi's
concentration camps. The "memoirs", which constituted a literary event in Europe and the US in 1995 and brought its author fame and
recognition, were first accused of being false three years later, and this report, based on interviews and official documents, definitely
settles the matter. But on top of this, it is also a really delight to read. It is organized in roughly three parts: a first one where the history of
Wilkomirski (real name: Grosjean) early years is presented, together with Wilkomirski own version, and the events leading to the writting
and publishing of Fragments, its reception, and its denunciation as fraud. A second one describing the author's historical research. And a
third part with a very perceptive and fair analysis of the whole affair. A discussion of important issues related with the instrumentalization
of the Holocaust, and references to recent works about this matter (Cole, Novick, etc) ends the book. A serious book on a real life event
that can be read and enjoyed as an excellent detective novel, with not a few surprising discoveries in the end. This english translation of
the german original Der Fall Wilkomirski also includes, after the main text, a complete text of Fragments.
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