Crucible Commentary: Author and historian lied about her family history and connection to the WWII “holocaust.” Albeit she made no financial gains, and her “motive remains unclear,” the children of the lie will twist and scour Truth for the sake of lies.
- Marie Sophie Hingst accused of faking her family connection to the holocaust
- Historian and blogger allegedly invented family members killed at Auschwitz
- She was said to have submitted 22 forms to Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum
- Hingst has been stripped of her ‘Golden Blogger’ award following revelations
A German historian allegedly invented 22 victims of the Holocaust and faked documents to make to it look like she was related to people sent to Nazi death camps.
Marie Sophie Hingst wrote blogs about her ‘family’ and gave details of how they were murdered at Auschwitz.
She was said to have made alterations to her relatives’ names and submitted documents to Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
But it has been alleged the blogger does not have Jewish ancestry and as many as 22 victims were fabricated in the forms she wrote.
Hingst has now been stripped of her ‘Golden Blogger’ award following the revelations published in German magazine Der Spiegel.
The historian, 31, who lives in Dublin, sent 22 pages of testimony for alleged non-existent people to Yad Vashem – Israel’s Holocaust memorial and archive – in 2013.
Marie Sophie Hingst allegedly fabricated details of Holocaust victims who never existed or were not killed in the Nazi death camps
The Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem. Marie Sophie Hingst allegedly submitted 22 false forms to the museum about non-existent victims
Her blog, ‘Read on My Dear, Read On’, which is no longer online, gave details of her invented family members and their suffering at the hands of the Nazis.
The alleged rouse was discovered when archivists from Stralsund read the blog and looked into Hingst’s biography before contacting Der Spiegel.
Marie Sophie Hingst was stripped of her ‘Golden Blogger’ award after the revelations by a German magazine
It was revealed she came from a protestant background and that few of her named relatives had actually existed.
Of the 22 alleged Holocaust victims, eight of them from the German city of Stralsund alone, but most of them never even existed, according to Der Spiegel.
The ones that did exist had their names altered slightly, but were still not Holocaust victims, the magazine states.
The documents from the city archives and other sources allegedly show that only three of the people named actually existed and none of them were Jewish and none had not been murdered.
Two members of the Hingst family the historian named actually did exist, these included her great-grandfather Hermann Hingst and his wife Marie, according to Der Spiegel.
But Hingst also slightly changed the name of her great-grandfather from Josef Karl Brandl to ‘Jakob Brandel’ and said he was murdered along with his wife and children in Auschwitz in 1942.
In a statement to Irish newspaper The University Times published from Trinity College Dublin, Hingst denied the accusations.
She said: ‘I strongly deny all accusations made by Der Spiegel. I have never falsified anything.’
When she met with the Der Spiegel editor last week Hingst insisted her blog was merely literature and not a completely factual account.
After the details were published this week, the creators of the ‘Golden Blogger’ award announced Hingst’s 2017 prize had been withdrawn.
Pictures of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust at the Hall of Names in the Holocaust History Museum at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem
Yad Vashem told the German press agency DPA that they are investigating the testimonies that Hingst submitted and added that ‘the process is not 100 per cent fail-safe’.
The museum also said it would be removing the documents Hingst from the Pages of Testimony at the site.
Hingst reportedly studied history in Berlin, Lyon and Los Angeles before moving to Dublin, where she graduated from Trinity College in 2013.
A post on Trinity College’s website congratulating Hingst on her blogging prize in 2017 has since been removed.
As her blog became more prolific it began to gain traction and Hingst won the 2018 ‘Future of Europe’ essay competition, where she compared her family’s suffering to that of present day refugees as she collected the award.
Despite speculation in the German media, no clear motive has emerged for the alleged deception as she did not make any financial gains.
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