‘Tell the story truthfully’

As an organization dedicated to remembrance and commemoration of the Holocaust, The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, is saddened and distressed by the memoir scandal involving Holocaust survivors who suffered through the horrors of the camps and in hiding. By embellishing their stories with a manufactured romance, they have demeaned and dishonored all survivors and their memories, weakened their voice of moral authority – and provided fodder for Holocaust deniers. This act breaches the trust of those they left behind.

We urge those survivors who are writing their memoirs to cleave to the truth. These stories are not adventure stories written for the benefit of publishers and movie-makers. They are promises kept to those who were left behind and urged those who survived to tell the story.

Tell the story, by all means, but tell it truthfully.

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