More than 2,700 concrete slabs of different heights welcome the visitor a few meters from the Brandenburg Gatein Berlin. Walking through the narrow hallways Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe generates an unparalleled feeling of anguish, in what is one of the most impressive monuments to the victims of the Holocaust of the world. But there is one fact about it that is usually tiptoed over: the controversy that weighed, at its inauguration two decades ago, on its promoter, the journalist Lea Rosh. Born as Edith Renate Ursula Rosh and daughter of a soldier of the WehrmachtRosh changed her real name to Leah in the 1950s: it sounded more Hebrew. From then on, the journalist became a spokesperson for the rights of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and, when the monument was inaugurated, her intention to insert into one of the columns the molar of a person supposedly executed in the extermination camp of Belczec He broke the victim’s patience. The real ones.
A complete lie
Of course: Rosh, after all, did not lie. Although he tried to become a spokesperson, and succeeded until then, for the victims, he did not pretend to be one of them. This was not the case in the case of Enric Marcowhose biography now comes to the big screen by the hand of Aitor Arregi and Jon Garañoalso authors of The infinite trench and Handia. The narrative that would lead the Catalan to preside over the Amicale It was a complete lie: he had never been to the Flossenbürg concentration camp, nor had he ever been a political exile. What’s more: it reached Germany voluntarily, within the framework of an agreement between the Franco and Nazi governments. In “a kind of labor branch of the Blue Division”, as clarified by Benito Bermejothe historian who uncovered his story in 2005. The false victim came to recognize his lie, justifying it by saying that what he intended was to give “a lesson that there are no heroes”. Make the story of the Holocaust reach more people, through a rounded speech. This is stated in the documentary Ich bin Enric Marco (2009, available on Filmin).
His lie, however, would serve to give arguments to those who opposed, in those years of the ZP government, the Historical Memory Law. “Rodríguez needs to get excited about his revolutionaries”wrote in ABCmentioning the Marco case, Ignacio Ruiz-Quintano, “who are (…) the supporters of undoing [la nación] by horizontal cuts, which no longer throw the proletarians into class war, but rather the families into the sniffing of bones. If the phenomenon does not scandalize anyone, it is because revolutions, in fact, are not, and this least of all, a heroism of those who arrive, but rather a negligence of those who leave. There it is nothing. But it is not neglect, far from it, that is the reason why stories like Marco’s have prospered in the narrative about the Holocaust. Nor is this the only case.
Seeking glory through trauma
Quite the opposite: there are many and, in all of them, the lie follows a common pattern. The political scientist Wolfgang Heuer has defined it as Wilkomirski syndromein reference to the case of the musician Binjamin Wilkomirskiwho, in 1995, recounted his alleged experiences as a child in the Majdanek and Auschwitz camps in the book Fragments. Wilkomirski, who at the time of the liberation of the camps was no more than four years old, nevertheless vividly recounted such shocking images as seeing a rat emerge from the belly of the corpse of a woman executed by the Nazis. Shortly afterwards, Misha Defonseca published even more gruesome memoirs: she claimed that, after the deportation of her Jewish parents, she had toured Europe through the forests, guarded by a pack of wolves. Even Oprah Winfrey would become interested in the case. It was all a lie, but Defonseca continues to deny the biggest lie even today, in the documentary Misha and the wolves (Netflix).
In the latter case, the surprising plot would swell the false victim’s wallet with millions of dollars. But the issue goes far beyond economic interest. He Wilkomirski syndromewhich can also occur in second and third generations, is based on a fascination with trauma through which the impostor, or the impostor, tries to place himself on the same level as the victims to seek, from that status, “the glory”. And what about those who give it to them?
A perfect story
There are at least two points in common between Marco, Defonseca, Wilkomirski or many other impostors. The first: that their testimonies are false. The second: but they are perfect. Detailed, indubitable; with introduction, middle and end. Round, like a movie script. A good example: once discovered, the former president of Amicale was taken by the production team of Ich bin Enric Marco to Kiel prison, where it is true that he served some time in prison. At that time (1943), the accusation of conspiring against the Reich did not result in any conviction – he was relegated from his volunteer work and returned to Spain; and even the judge detected in Marco the obsessive desire to impress his colleagues. Decades later, square in front of the camera, the Catalan counted the steps from wall to wall in the prison yard: there were six. The same ones that, he assured undaunted, he always retraced since then, in a reflex action, every time he waited for the bus.
Marco did not know then that the prison had been rebuilt after his stay there, but the narrative of the alleged trauma was perfect. He, who was never a victim, was a born storyteller. One with enough charisma to make the socialist deputy cry Carme Chacon in his intervention in the Congress of Deputies, shortly before the deception was discovered, or convincing his colleagues from Amicale, among whom were several real deportees, of his lie. It happens, however, that memory, the real one, is more unpleasant. Erase traumatic images; put others together, it generates doubts. Suffering often results in silence; The victims hesitate, remain blank, become confused without contradicting themselves. For the listener, however, a linear, chronological narrative, perfectly linked and in which details are linked that connect with their own feelings, is more attractive. As the journalist said a few days ago Elena Fernandez Pello at the presentation of the preview of Frame in the Foncalada Ambassador Cinemas, “From emotions we are willing to believe in the lies they tell us”.
What’s more: we prefer them to real life. In the case of true victims, the transmission of the listener’s bias over the years can elevate an anecdote to the rank of category; mark the limits of the story or intensify its drama. In that of those who long to be so, an unblemished narrative is constructed; a novel that even Oprah Winfrey I would pay to listen. If the lie, in this case, can be forgiven as pious, that will depend on the criteria of the recipient. Enric Marco was clear about it.
- On Monday, November 11 NORTH organizes a cineforum after the screening of “Marco” with historians Rubén Vega and Arantza Margolles.
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