Hannah: From Dachau to the Olympics and Beyond

Hannah: From Dachau to the Olympics and Beyond

Front cover for the Hannah: From Dachau to the Olympics and Beyond written about Hannah Pence.
Author Jean Goodwin Messinger
Country United States
Language English
Subject Hannah Pence
Genre Holocaust biography
Publisher White Pelican Press
Publication date
 August 2, 2005
ISBN 978-0615128665

Hannah: From Dachau to the Olympics and Beyond is a Holocaust biography written by Jean Goodwin Messinger about Hannah Pence. The book gained notoriety when it was revealed that the entire story had been fabricated by Pence.

Claims

Pence claims that during World War II, at the age of three, she was taken from her family of German Jews by the Nazis. She was forced into the Dachau concentration camp, where medical experiments were performed upon her and she was starved by the guards. After being rescued from the camp by American forces, she went on to live in a convent whose nuns taught her to ski. The Denver Post wrote that after the convent, "She claimed to have competed on Germany’s 1956 Olympic ski team. Then came a stint on a kibbutz in Israel. And a heroic battle for real estate she said Germany rightly owed her. And a marriage to a U.S. pilot who, she said, later went missing in Vietnam. Oh, and a scare during the 1972 Olympics, an audience with the pope, an encounter with Ronald Reagan at the Berlin Wall and an airplane hijacking by a Palestinian terrorist."[1]

Aftermath

The story began to unravel in the summer of 2009 when Pence was baptized by Texas evangelical Beth Moore.[2] The congregation and others in the town took issue with some of the claims in the book, which led to Messinger admitting that she had not checked on any of the claims Pence had made "because, to me, that would have felt sneaky."[1] After it was revealed that the entirety of Pence's story was a fabrication, Messinger stated, "I was terribly embarrassed. Not only for me, but for everyone else touched by this."[3] Pence's real life ex-husband, from whom she was estranged, confirmed to the media that none of her stories were true.[4]

Posters on the white nationalist website Stormfront used the news that the book was a fabrication as "proof" that the Holocaust itself was a fake.[5]

The Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODAH), a Holocaust denial forum, has also used Pence's stories as an argument that the Holocaust did not happen.[6]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Greene, Susan (16 Sep 2009). "Greene: Holocaust survival tale took in many". The Denver Post. Retrieved 13 October 2016.
  2. ↑ Loudat, John (1 Aug 2009). "3,200 Hear Beth Moore in Rio Rancho" (PDF). BAPTIST NEW MEXICAN. Retrieved 13 October 2016.
  3. ↑ Whaley, Monte (6 Feb 2012). "Longmont author, duped by Holocaust huckster for one book, focuses on other lives and stories". The Denver Post. Retrieved 13 October 2016.
  4. ↑ "Author recants Holocaust tale - Biography’s subject believed to be a fraud, has fled Longmont". Kuruc. 28 Sep 2009. Retrieved 13 October 2016.
  5. ↑ "One more holocaust survivor memoir turns out to be completely fake". Stormfront. Jul 2009. Retrieved 13 October 2016.
  6. ↑ "Forum Suggestion: Own section for Proven Liars". The Revisionist CODAH Forum. Retrieved 23 August 2014.
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