Opinions on the veracity of Martin Gray's "For Those I loved"

[Jean-Loup]

I recently bought about a dozen first hand accounts from holocaust victims to read, amongst which is Martin Gray's apparently famous (though I had never heard about it) "For those I loved"

At first, when he starts setting up his food trafficking in the ghetto, I thought it to be exceptionaly interesting and it seemed like about the best autobiography I had ever read.

However, as the pages wore on, the story sounded more and more difficult to believe. I am not even half way through the book yet, and he has already escaped from the Germans about a dozen times, etc. Also, I read many autobiographies, and something just doesnt seem right with this one: too many details, to many close escapes, too much pride in his own skills (whereas real survivor accounts often question how they survived while other didnt, Gray is always going on about his personal tallent, his sixth sence, etc), etc.

The whole thing seems like a Sven Hassel style exagerated novel, based on a large number of true stories all lumped into one.

What are your opinions on this? Was any serious research ever done into finding evidence that can back Gray's story, etc?

JL

[CWP]

From Wikipedia:

"Holocaust historian Gitta Sereny has dismissed Gray’s book as a forgery in a 1979 article in New Statesman magazine, writing that "Gray's For Those I Loved was the work of Max Gallo the ghostwriter, who also produced Papillon. During the research for a Sunday Times inquiry into Gray's work, M. Gallo informed me coolly that he ‘needed’ a long chapter on Treblinka because the book required something strong for pulling in readers. When I myself told Gray, the ‘author,’ that he had manifestly never been to, nor escaped from Treblinka, he finally asked, despairingly, ‘But does it matter? Wasn't the only thing that Treblinka did happen, that it should be written about, and that some Jews should be shown to have been heroic?’”

According to Wikipedia, the above quote is from Sereny, Gitta. "The Men Who Whitewash Hitler", New Statesman, Vol. 98, No. 2537, November 2, 1979, pp. 670-73.

The number of fake Holocaust memoirs is astounding. You might want to look into some of the other accounts you purchased before reading them.

[Jean-Loup]

Yes, I read that bit on wikipedia, but was wondering if there was something more solid and other sources.
Interestingly, although Gray lives in France/Belgium, and the book was originaly written in French, the controvery is not mentioned on the French wikipedia page...

JL

[Jean-Loup]

I found these articles on the internet, apparently originaly from "Le Monde".
I am a bit surprised by the historians defence... I would have expected him to try to find period documents and witnesses to defend himself... Here he is just using some weak argumentation, and even saying that he helped Gray write the book using both his historian and novelist tallents.