Binjamin Wilkomirski

Binjamin Wilkomirski is the name adopted by Bruno Dössekker, born Grosjean (born in 1941) when he claimed to be surviving Holocauste.

In 1995 Binjamin Wilkomirski, a musician and manufacturing Switzerland musical instruments, publishes a book of memories, Bruchstücke. Aus einer Kindheit 1939-1948 (Fragments: a childhood 1939-1948) . It described there its childhood during the occupation Nazi while passing by her hiding-places in the Polish countryside and its internment in two various Nazi camps (Majdanek and Auschwitz). After the release it was placed in an orphanage in Cracow where his/her mother finds it and brings it with her of Swiss.

The book published in German by Jüdischer Verlag was very quickly translated in nine languages. It received criticisms admiring comparing the author with Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi or Anne Frank. Wilkomirski was invited to many emissions like witness and expert of the Shoah and received three important literary prizes of which National Jewish Book Award , and the Prix Report of Shoah .

However in 1998 the Swiss press starts to wonder about the inconsistencies in the account of Wilkomirski. Daniel Ganzfried then supports in the Swiss weekly magazine Weltwoche that Wilkomirski knew the German death camps “only like tourist” and that it was not born in Latvia but in Switzerland from a unmarried mother, Yvonne Grosjean. It was placed in an orphanage not with Cracow but in German-speaking Switzerland with Adelboden, where it was adopted by Dössekker, a couple without child of Zurich. Grosjean/Dössekker denied these charges. The editor of the memories charged the Swiss historian Stefan Maechler with the checking of the facts. In 1999, the historian entirely confirmed the remarks of Ganzfried.

References

Blake Eskin : Life in Parts: The Making and Unmaking off Binjamin Wilkomirski , New York and London: Norton, 2002, ISBN 0-393-04871-3
Daniel Ganzfried : Die Holocaust-Disguised. Erzählung. In: Sebastian Hefti (ED.): … alias Wilkomirski. Holocaust-Disguised Die. Jüdische Verlagsanstalt, Berlin 2002, pp. 17-154, ISBN 3-934658-29-6
Stefan Maechler (2001a): The Wilkomirski Affair: With Study in Biographical Truth , Translated from the German by John E. Woods. Including the text off Fragments, New York: Schocken Books, ISBN 0-8052-1135-7
Stefan Maechler (2001b): Wilkomirski the Victim. Individual Remembering Social ace Interaction and Public Vent. In: History & Memory , vol. 13, No 2, fall/winter 2001, pp. 59-95
Stefan Maechler : Aufregung um Wilkomirski. Genesis eines Skandals und the Seine Bedeutung . In: Diekmann/Schoeps (eds.): Das Wilkomirski-Syndrom. Eingebildete Erinnerungen oder Von der Sehnsucht, Opfer zu center. Pendo: Zurich and Munich 2002, ISBN 3-85842-472-2.), pp. 86-131
David Oels : With real-life Grimm' S fairy bruises. Korrekturen, Nachträge, Ergänzungen zum Fall Wilkomirski . In: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, N.F . 14 (2004) vol. 2, pp. 373-390
Binjamin Wilkomirski : Fragments. Memories off has Childhood, 1939-1948 . Translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway. New York: Schocken Books, 1996

External bonds

Why One Would Pretend to Be has Victim off the Holocaust: The Wilkomirski Memoir by Renata Salecl in Other Voices 2000.

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