Why Fake A Holocaust Memoir?

It sounds like she took her cues from The Jungle Book and from Jerzy Kosinski, who did something similar many years ago.

Another thing. You write: Survivors, Holocaust scholars, and community leaders need to stop going into conniptions whenever the words ‘Holocaust’ or ‘genocide’ are used to describe anything other than the events of World War II.

I definitely agree with you regarding the term "genocide"--clearly there have been a number of genocides other than the one carried out by the Nazis. But I do have a problem when people throw the word "Holocaust" around. For example, pro-lifers like to call abortion a holocaust, which frankly makes me sick, whether I agree with abortion or not. I don't blame survivors or Holocaust scholars for getting upset about this.

If every perceived atrocity/tragedy becomes a holocaust, then the inevitable result is that the events of the Holocaust are minimized. No genocide is worse than another. The loss of one Jewish life is not more significant than the loss of a life in Darfur. However, there are certain things about the Holocaust that make it different (not more important, or worse, or anything like that--just different) from every other genocide we have seen, namely the systematic way it was carried out, and the fact that it was carried out by one of the most "civilized" and educated countries in the world.

"For example, pro-lifers like to call abortion a holocaust..."

And Israeli deputy Defense Ministers like to threaten Gazans with a "bigger holocaust".

"No genocide is worse than another (...)However, there are certain things about the Holocaust that make it different (not more important, or worse, or anything like that--just different) from every other genocide we have seen..."

But of course, each genocide has something different about it that distinguishes it from others. So why bring up this pedestrian fact? Are the things that make the Nazi holocaust unique worse than the things that make other genocides unique? If so, this would appear to contradict your first comment (no genocide worse than another). If not, why bother mentioning what we all know? 

Monica, I agree with you that every Genocide is different.  The Holocaust was unique for many reasons, some of which you didn't mention, but one of them was not that it was systematic.  The Armenian Genocide was systematic too.  Also, Winston Churchill called the events in Ottoman Armenia a "Holocaust" before the word Genocide was invented and before the Holocaust in Europe happened.

I can't help wondering if older, pluralistic use of words like "holocaust" to refer to great conflagrations, sacrifices, and annihilations will ever return now that a permanent article has been attached to it. I don't think there's any doubt that - as Monica puts it - the circumstances of The Holocaust are different from many other events of mass murder or racial persecution.  But at the same time, "holocaust" has a meaning in English long established prior to the Shoah, just as genocide does.  Perhaps allowing more pluralism in use of words like holocaust goes a long way...I realize it's a semantic concern, but labels, particularly when used to predicate distinctions of suffering or loss, matter a great deal.

I'd say that a better way to get some support and sympathy would be for her to say that she had a horribly painful childhood, her Belgian resistance fighter parents were killed by the Nazis, and the family members that raised her in her parents' absence treated her badly because they thought her parents were traitors.  Just saying, it works for me.