Oxford
University Press. All rights reserved.Holocaust and Genocide Studies
17.1 (2003) 161-163
The Wilkomirski Affair: A Study in Biographical
Truth, Stefan Maechler (New York: Schocken, 2001), ix
+ 496 pp., $16.95.
THE scandal of Binjamin
Wilkomirski's Fragments is generally known.
First published in German in 1995, the book appeared in
English in 1996. Its immediate success launched its
author into a giddy round of readings, interviews,
lectures, and honors.
Yet even before publication the German publisher,
Suhrkamp, had been advised not to release the work. After
speaking with Wilkomirski and insisting on an ill-fated
"Afterword," Suhrkamp head Siegfried Unseld
directed the company's
subsidiary Jüdischer Verlag to go ahead and publish
the book.
Doubts about the memoir's veracity soon were voiced
publicly, however, culminating in an angry 1998
denunciation by the Swiss writer Daniel Ganzfried,
who called the book a hoax and its author a liar.
Wilkomirski, claimed Ganzfried, was not a Jewish survivor
but rather Bruno Grosjean, a Swiss gentile who as
a child had been adopted by a physician, Kurt
Dössekker, and his wife, Martha.
For a while opinions were split. Suhrkamp initially
stood by Wilkomirski and, for the most part, resisted
demands that the book be withdrawn from the market.
Others joined Ganzfried and called for a full explanation
from the beleaguered author, who continued to insist that
he was indeed Binjamin Wilkomirski and that his book was
genuine. Lengthy articles in the summer of 1999 in the
New Yorker (by Philip Gourevitch) and Granta (by
Elena Lappin) added weight to Ganzfried's
assertions. A complete revelation was still lacking,
however, and Wilkomirski continued to insist that he was
a Jewish survivor, and that Fragments was a
truthful account of his childhood.
In 1999 Wilkomirski's agent engaged a University of
Zurich historian, Stefan Maechler, as an
independent scholar charged with investigating the case
and ascertaining the truth. In July of that same year,
Maechler gave a preliminary report to the principal
parties, and, as a result, those publishers still
marketing the book withdrew it from sale. Maechler wrote
up his findings in the form of a journalistic report,
which was published in German in 2000 and which has now
appeared in, as the imprint states, "somewhat different
form" in English. Schocken has included the text of
Fragments as an appendix.
Maechler first examines Grosjean's story, proving
conclusively that Bruno Dössekker was born Bruno
Grosjean in 1941, the illegitimate child of Yvonne
Grosjean. Prior to being taken in as a foster child
by the Dössekkers in late 1945, he had been shunted
from one address to another, first with, and then
without, his handicapped mother. The childless
Dössekkers did their best to provide stability,
comfort, and security for the disturbed youngster and
legally adopted him in 1957, when he was sixteen years
old. They were forceful advocates for Bruno to study
medicine and to continue the Dössekker physician
dynasty. However, Maechler clearly demonstrates, the
trauma stemming from the instability, abuse, and
pressures of Bruno's formative years had left a deep
impression.
In the second chapter, Maechler sets out Wilkomirski's
view of himself and his life. Wilkomirski admitted that
the Dössekkers had previously cared for a child
named Bruno Grosjean, but that Wilkomirski, who at the
end of the war had been brought to Switzerland from
Poland, soon replaced this child. The Dössekkers,
Wilkomirski insists, continually attempted to efface his
Jewish identity and concentration-camp experiences. But
Maechler repeatedly brings out the inconsistencies and
discrepancies in Wilkomirski's account. For example, in
one interview Wilkomirski describes an event as having
taken place when he was fifteen years old. Elsewhere he
states that he was seventeen years old. Succeeding
chapters describe "The Origins of Fragments" and how the
work became "A Global Literary Event," before
Wilkomirski's "Plunge into the Abyss," where he
experiences both criticism and support -- the latter
largely from survivors.
In "Tracking Down the Truth," Maechler describes his
conversations with the individuals whom Wilkomirski had
used to "prove" his past -- for example, that he had been
in two homes for Jewish child survivors in Cracow in the
postwar period. Maechler found no evidence that any child
could have arrived in Basel from Poland with a blank
nametag, as Wilkomirski insists he did, and not have been
noticed and noted in the records. Maechler locates a
neighbor in Zurich who clearly remembers the arrival of
Bruno Grosjean as a foster child of the Dössekkers
and is certain that there was no foster child before
him.
Other stories from Fragments relating to
Switzerland (begging at a fair, identifying a picture of
William Tell as that of a member of the SS) are also
revealed to be false. Maechler shows striking
similarities between Fragments and its author, on
the one hand, and The Painted Bird and Jerzy
Kosinski on the other. He exposes as a fraud one of
the "child survivors," now living in California, whom
Wilkomirski "remembers" -- a woman whose background
(foster care, abuse, instability) is similar to Bruno
Grosjean's. Equally fascinating is Maechler's
demonstration that the topography of the "farm in Poland"
and Binjamin Wilkomirski's experiences there prior to his
sojourn in the camps are identical to those Bruno
Grosjean knew from the children's home in Adelboden,
where he had lived for about six months in 1945 before
being taken in by the Dössekkers.
In the afterword Wilkomirski tells how his "memory
could not be wiped clean," and that "countless
conversations with specialists and historians have helped
me clarify many previously inexplicable shards of
memory." Given the widespread interest in recovered
memory in the 1990s, its role in retrieving the
"fragments" that make up the memoir was generally
assumed. Maechler carefully discusses this aspect of the
work and describes how Wilkomirski, with his friend
Elitsur Bernstein, exploited the practice not only
to "discover" his own life, but also to lecture on the
subject and encourage others to make use of the
practice.
In place of the inventions that constitute
Fragments, Maechler has produced facts and
clarifications. Yet he is careful not to roundly condemn
the author, as Ganzfried did. Nor does he emphasize
Wilkomirski's disturbed mental state, saying instead that
the "story he wrote in Fragments and has told
elsewhere took place solely within the world of his
thoughts and emotions." "Without an audience," he bluntly
states, "there would be no Wilkomirski." One might also
say that without Maechler's impressive and sound book
there would be no certainty, and Fragments would
continue to hold sway over many of the readers who
swallowed it. Maechler's is not the last word on the
subject -- Blake Eskin has published A Life in
Pieces, and other responses to this sad affair may
yet appear.
David Scrase
University of Vermont
The
power behind the legend 
write
to David Irving