![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
UBC: The Wilkomirski Affair
Dec. 28th, 2008 10:41 amMaechler, Stefan. The Wilkomirski Affair: A Study in Biographical Truth. [Includes the complete text of Fragments by Binjamin Wilkomirski. Transl. Carol Brown Janeway.] Transl. John E. Woods. New York: Schocken Books, 2001.
The Wikipedia entry on Binjamin Wilkomirski provides a capsule summary of what this book is and how it came to be written.
I'm fascinated by forgeries and frauds, and in particular by narratives of how they come to be uncovered. Maechler (and his translator) writes a very clear, calm, patient account of his investigations and conclusions. What I found particularly striking is the compassion he shows, not merely for the Holocaust survivors and other innocent persons taken in by Wilkomirski's fraud, but for Wilkomirski himself--even in the face of Wilkomirski's attack on Maechler's competence and motives. Maechler doesn't merely disprove the validity of Wilkomirski's Holocaust survival narrative; he uncovers the truth--what can be found of it--of Wilkomirski's real childhood, and he champions the suffering of the child Bruno Grosjean in exactly the way he is accused (by Wilkomirski) of betraying the suffering of the imaginary child Binjamin Wilkomirski.
He also has a very thoughtful discussion of why Wilkomirski's fraud was accepted as truth--and not merely accepted but fervently embraced--analyzing and explaining the phenomenon through the rhetorical strategies both of the book and of Wilkomirski's performance as a Holocaust survivor, and through the needs and desires of the audiences before whom book and man performed, especially the ways in which Wilkomirski fit into and advanced the agendas of various parties, most of whom were sincere and legitimate researchers, advocates, and survivors, but one of whom, Laura Grabowski a.k.a. Lauren Stratford a.k.a. Laurel Rose Willson, was every bit as much a fraud as Wilkomirski himself. Their collusion, shading strongly as it does into folie à deux, is one of the most train-wreck fascinating byways of Maechler's investigation.
But mostly the book is compelling for Maechler's patience and persistence, for the way in which, again and again, he uncovers the truth by retracing Wilkomirski's steps, by talking to the people Wilkomirski talked to (most notably the Holocaust survivor Karola, whose story Wilkomirski appropriated), by asking questions Wilkomirski never bothered to ask--in particular, Wilkomirski's story of entering Switzerland illegally, which, in its rhetoric of victimhood, of the helpless child caught in the cruel teeth of the bureaucratic machine, feels true to those of us who have neither experience nor expertise to know better, but which, Maechler discovers, simply cannot have happened that way--that, in fact, the bureaucratic machine would have macerated and spat out the child long before he got to Basel. It's a deeply illuminating and disturbing demonstration of how far a lie can get if it reflects what its audience thinks the truth should look like.
The Wikipedia entry on Binjamin Wilkomirski provides a capsule summary of what this book is and how it came to be written.
I'm fascinated by forgeries and frauds, and in particular by narratives of how they come to be uncovered. Maechler (and his translator) writes a very clear, calm, patient account of his investigations and conclusions. What I found particularly striking is the compassion he shows, not merely for the Holocaust survivors and other innocent persons taken in by Wilkomirski's fraud, but for Wilkomirski himself--even in the face of Wilkomirski's attack on Maechler's competence and motives. Maechler doesn't merely disprove the validity of Wilkomirski's Holocaust survival narrative; he uncovers the truth--what can be found of it--of Wilkomirski's real childhood, and he champions the suffering of the child Bruno Grosjean in exactly the way he is accused (by Wilkomirski) of betraying the suffering of the imaginary child Binjamin Wilkomirski.
He also has a very thoughtful discussion of why Wilkomirski's fraud was accepted as truth--and not merely accepted but fervently embraced--analyzing and explaining the phenomenon through the rhetorical strategies both of the book and of Wilkomirski's performance as a Holocaust survivor, and through the needs and desires of the audiences before whom book and man performed, especially the ways in which Wilkomirski fit into and advanced the agendas of various parties, most of whom were sincere and legitimate researchers, advocates, and survivors, but one of whom, Laura Grabowski a.k.a. Lauren Stratford a.k.a. Laurel Rose Willson, was every bit as much a fraud as Wilkomirski himself. Their collusion, shading strongly as it does into folie à deux, is one of the most train-wreck fascinating byways of Maechler's investigation.
But mostly the book is compelling for Maechler's patience and persistence, for the way in which, again and again, he uncovers the truth by retracing Wilkomirski's steps, by talking to the people Wilkomirski talked to (most notably the Holocaust survivor Karola, whose story Wilkomirski appropriated), by asking questions Wilkomirski never bothered to ask--in particular, Wilkomirski's story of entering Switzerland illegally, which, in its rhetoric of victimhood, of the helpless child caught in the cruel teeth of the bureaucratic machine, feels true to those of us who have neither experience nor expertise to know better, but which, Maechler discovers, simply cannot have happened that way--that, in fact, the bureaucratic machine would have macerated and spat out the child long before he got to Basel. It's a deeply illuminating and disturbing demonstration of how far a lie can get if it reflects what its audience thinks the truth should look like.
