US author of faked Holocaust book fights for money

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
An author who admitted she fabricated a best-selling memoir about living with wolves to survive the Holocaust asked a judge Thursday to throw out a lawsuit against her. Misha Defonseca said in Middlesex Superior Court that it was too late for the book's publisher to try to overturn a $32.4 million verdict that Defonseca and her ghost writer won against the publisher in 2001 in a fight over profits. Publisher Jane Daniel claims in her lawsuit that the jury awarded the authors the money because they believed Defonseca's harrowing tale of a tortured childhood was true. Defonseca acknowledged this year that her stories of being taken in by wolves to escape the Nazis, killing a German soldier in self-defense, and walking across Europe in search of her parents were fantasies. In fact, Defonseca admitted in February, she isn't even Jewish.