Henryk Batuta

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fake street name "proving" that Henryk Batuta Street exists

The real Batuta Street in Warsaw

Henryk Batuta (born as Izaak Apfelbaum) was a fictional socialist revolutionary and Polish Communist made up as a hoax on the Polish Wikipedia. The fake biography said Batuta was born in Odessa in 1898, participated in the Russian Civil War, and fought with Ernest Hemingway during the 1936-39 Civil War in Spain. The article was created on November 8, 2004, and exposed as a hoax 15 months later when it was listed for deletion.

The article was 10 sentences long while it existed on Wikipedia, never becoming more than a stub, which probably prevented the hoax from being spotted earlier. The hoax article gained some prominence after stories about it appeared in prominent Polish newspapers (Gazeta Wyborcza) and magazines (Przekrój), as well as a British one (The Observer).

The article also falsely claimed a street in Warsaw was named "Henryk Batuta Street", after the fictional communist official. The anonymous hoaxers who created the article, according to the press calling themselves "the Batuta Army", allegedly wanted to draw attention to the fact that there are still places in Poland named after former communist officials who do not deserve the honour.

The hoax was exposed when the article was listed for deletion. Even after the article was exposed as a well organized hoax, its perpetrators tried to convince others of its authenticity by providing false bibliographical information and even by uploading a doctored photograph of a street name "ulica Henryka Batuty" (Henryk Batuta Street). The mystification was "officially" exposed and confirmed on February 9, 2006 when Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and weekly Przekrój published their articles about the hoax.

There is in fact a "ulica Batuty" (Batuta Street) in Warsaw [1]. However the name actually comes from the Polish word "batuta" which means "conductor's baton". The biography of Batuta was closely modelled on the life of general Karol Świerczewski.