In her memoir, Misha Defonseca told the story of how, during the Second World War, her Jewish parents were arrested and she ran away from home in an attempt to find them. At the age of 6, she (among other things) wandered across occupied Europe, found her way into the Warsaw Ghetto and lived to tell about it, was occasionally taken in by packs of wolves, and killed a German soldier with her pocketknife. Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years was eventually translated into 18 languages, and became the basis for a French film, Survivre avec les loups ("Surviving With The Wolves").

Yesterday she realeased a statement in which she admitted the entire thing was a hoax.

In her statement, approximately translated from the French, Defonseca said: "Yes, my name is Monique De Wael, but I have wanted to forget it since I was 4 years old. My parents were arrested and I was taken in by my grandfather, Ernest De Wael, and my uncle, Maurice De Wael. I was called 'daughter of a traitor' because my father was suspected of having spoken under torture in the prison of Saint-Gilles. Ever since I can remember, I felt Jewish. . . . There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world. The story in the book is mine. It is not the actual reality - it was my reality, my way of surviving. At first, I did not want to publish it, but then I was convinced by Jane Daniel. I ask forgiveness from all those who feel betrayed."