Editor MNH: 11/02/04
Fragments, Memories of a Childhood 1939-l948 was published in l996. In this book the author, Binjamin Wilkomirski, relates that he was born a Jew in Latvia, was separated from his parents at age three, was sent to Auschwitz where he endured living hell. The book received numerous awards and was added to the extensive holocaust selection of the M. Senior High School Library.
There was no Jew Binjamin Wilkomirski, there was however a Swiss gentile, Bruno Berthe, adopted by the family Doessekker. Binjamin Wilkomirski/Bruno Doessekker is an imposter and his story a fraud. I do not claim that Henry G. who gave his Holocaust survivor talk at the M. Campus/UW (10/14/2004) is an imposter like Wilkomirski or that his book Ragdolls is a fraud. But there is much in his story which is not true. For example Mr. G. relates that he was shipped from Czestochowa/Poland to Buchenwald/Germany. At Buchenwald he “saw” a sign on the chimney The only way out of this camp is through this chimney. There was no such sign and no gas chamber at Buchenwald. And no, Ilse Koch did not make lampshades out of the tattooed skins of prisoners. I recommend a course in continuing holocaust education for Mr. G. in order for him to learn which atrocity tales have been dropped from the official holocaust lore. I strongly suspect that Mr. G. never was at Buchenwald. At the end of the war the inmates were shipped from East to West. His claim that he was shipped from Poland to Germany made sense, but not his subsequent transfer from West to East, namely from Buchenwald/Germany to Theresienstadt/Czechoslovakia. Direct transfer from Czestochowa to Theresienstadt. is more likely.
I have an advice for the Social Justice Group. Next time pick somebody more plausible than a Mr. G.