''Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood'' is a 1995 book, whose author used the pseudonym Binjamin Wilkomirski, which purports to be a memoir of the Holocaust. It was debunked by Swiss journalist and writer in August 1998. The subsequent disclosure of Wilkomirski's fabrications sparked heated debate in the German- and English-speaking world. Many critics argued that ''Fragments'' no longer had any literary value. Swiss historian and anti-Semitism expert Stefan Maechler later wrote, "Once the professed interrelationship between the first-person narrator, the death-camp story he narrates, and historical reality are proved palpably false, what was a masterpiece becomes kitsch." The controversy was the origin of the term Wilkomirski syndrome for similar cases of fraud.
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''Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood'' is a 1995 book, whose author used the pseudonym Binjamin Wilkomirski, which purports to be a memoir of the Holocaust. It was debunked by Swiss journalist and writer in August 1998. The subsequent disclosure of Wilkomirski's fabrications sparked heated debate in the German- and English-speaking world. Many critics argued that ''Fragments'' no longer had any literary value. Swiss historian and anti-Semitism expert Stefan Maechler later wrote, "Once the professed interrelationship between the first-person narrator, the death-camp story he narrates, and historical reality are proved palpably false, what was a masterpiece becomes kitsch." The controversy was the origin of the term Wilkomirski syndrome for similar cases of fraud.
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