Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 1, 2021

Back to the basics of celebrating independent cinema, actors say a virtual Sundance is better: "People around the world now have access." (Jan. 29) AP Entertainment

Get ready for your next documentary obsession.

The riveting "Misha and the Wolves," which premiered Sunday at Sundance Film Festivaland was picked up for release by Netflix, tells the unbelievable story of writer MishaDefonseca, a Belgian woman living in Massachusetts with a jaw-droppingtaleof how she survived the Holocaust.

In the mid-1990s, Defonseca told her friends about growing up as a young Jewish girl during World War II and beingsent to live with a Catholic family after her parents were arrested by the Nazis. The family was crueland she ran away,walking nearly 2,000 miles to Germany in search of her parents. All alone with justa compass and a knife, she says she befriended a pack of wolves in the forest, who "accepted and protected" her on the journey.

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Stranger-than-fiction documentary "Misha and the Wolves" premiered Sunday at Sundance Film Festival.(Photo: SUNDANCE INSTITUTE)

Astonished by heraccount, small publisher Jane Daniel saw potential for a hit book, and in 1997published "Misha: A Mmoire of the Holocaust Years," which Defonseca authored with a ghostwriter.The memoir was a modest success, which Daniel hoped to boostwith a bookedappearance on "Oprah." But Defonseca unexpectedly canceled the night before the interview,and proceeded to sue her publisher for unpaid royalties. Daniel was financially ruined; meanwhile, the book became a sensation in Europe with a different publisher.

To say much more about "Misha" would spoil its many twists and turns, and resulting legal actions. The rest of the documentary plays like an espionage thriller, as Daniel enlists historians and genealogists to help uncover Defonseca's past and see if she was scammed.

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"Misha" director Sam Hobkinson initially read aboutDefonseca's court case in a newspaper article in 2014.

"I went back and researched the story, and couldn't believe it was true," Hobkinson said in a post-screening Q&A. "It started with me finding what I thought would be a great story about storytelling. I wasn't in the market to make a Holocaust documentary, but I realized that we ended up making a kind of Holocaust documentary, albeitquite a different one."

Belgian author MishaDefonseca claims she was taken in by a pack of wolves as she trekked to Germany alone during World War II.(Photo: SUNDANCE INSTITUTE)

The project proved difficult to finance, largely because it casts doubt on someone who says they survived the Holocaust. Six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators in the early 1940s, yetHolocaust denial runs rampant in online forums such as Facebook. Anti-Semitic attacks hit an all-time high in the U.S. in 2019, and a recent survey found a "shocking" lack of Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Gen Z.

Survey: Almost two-thirds of millennials, Gen Z don't know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust

"People were worried because they didn't want to be involved in something that would fan the flames of Holocaust denial," Hobkinson said. "Of course,that was foremost in our minds from the outset. We've always felt this isdifficult territory, but you shouldn't shy away from it. You'vegot to tackle the difficult subjects head-on. And I hope that we wrestle the story back from the Holocaust denial camp."

Part of the way "Misha" accomplishes that is by puttingEvelyne Haendel, a Holocaust survivor in Belgium, front and center. Haendel becomes a crucial character in the documentary's second half, when she's hired to investigateDefonseca and her family. She ultimately gets the lastword,speaking frankly aboutDefonseca and her motivations at the film's end.

Balancing the documentary's sensational mysterywith actual survivor stories was "paramount, because wedidn't want to feel we wereplaying intothe hands of Holocaust deniers," Hobkinson said."And the more we got to know Evelyne, the more we realized she was our star, really. She's the sort of central, moral good. She was so honest and so open and so thoughtful in our interview that she became a much bigger part of the film."

"Misha and the Wolves" will have a second virtual screening Tuesday (10 a.m. ET) at Sundance.

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'Misha and the Wolves' is a stranger-than-fiction documentary about a woman's Holocaust story - USA TODAY

Category: Holocaust Denial
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