The authenticity of a highly acclaimed Holocaust memoir has been cast into doubt, The New York Times reported. Binjamin Wilkomirski, whose “Fragments: Memoirs of a Wartime Childhood” won a National Jewish Book Award after it was published in English in 1996, is not a Latvian Jew who survived two concentration camps, but the son of a Swiss Protestant mother who was later adopted by a Swiss couple, according to Swiss legal documents and news reports. Wilkomirski and his publishers are standing by his memories, which were recovered with the help of therapy.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.