Horror among humans, sanctuary with wolves
A Holocaust survivor speaks out after 50 years
DARTMOUTH — Whenever silver-haired Misha Defonseca, a 64-year-old Holocaust survivor, sees a dead squirrel in the road, she does not avert her gaze and drive on. She stops her car.
Respectfully, she moves the animal’s body to the side of the road because animal corpses still remind her of the Holocaust.
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Captivated, a capacity audience listened quietly to Ms. Defonseca recall the horrors of the Holocaust, and, ultimately, her odyssey of survival, at UMass Dartmouth on Monday evening.
Ms. Defonseca was promoting her book, “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust,” which will be published in April. […]
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As an 8-year-old child, she said, she walked for four years, across 3,000 miles, from Belgium through eight Nazi-occupied countries in search of her parents, and along the way was befriended by wolves.
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Hiding in forests, she said, she survived by stealing from farm kitchens, pilfering crops in fields, and eating wild plants. In the course of her travels, she lived with a pack of wolves, she said.
She told of being captured by partisans, trapped in the infamous Warsaw ghetto, and being forced to knife a Nazi soldier to death in self-defense after she witnessed him rape and shoot a young girl.
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As she saw humanity crumble around her, she said, she found solace, a superior ability to find food, and a tender, enveloping warmth in the company of wolves. And it was the start of a great love.
Eventually, she said, she was accepted into the wolf community and the “mummy wolf” replaced her lost mother. If she straggled behind the pack, the mummy wolf would cautiously watch her.
“I was human only in appearance. I had become a wolf and a pup. […]
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Ms. Defonseca emigrated to the United States in 1988 and lives with her husband of 28 years and a menagerie of animals: 12 cats, three dogs and 17 wolves nearby, in a suburb one hour from Boston.
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Source:
By Manuela Da Costa-Fernandes, Standard-Times staff writer
11/12/97
www.s-t.com/daily/11-97/11-12-97/c01lo080.htm
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Webmaster note: Unbelievably, she sued her publisher for not trying hard enough to market this lying piece of trash, and won millions. See: “Misha Defonseca award tripled; multiple damages result in total award of $22.5 million for holocaust survivor” (www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=84430)