Second World War

A genealogist exposed Surviving with Wolves, Misha Defonseca's celebrated memoir of the Holocaust, as a pack of lies.

In Zimbabwe, for a few months during the early stages of the collapse of civil society under Robert Mugabe, I flitted from bookshop to bookshop, happy as a hummingbird in a tropical greenhouse. Paperbacks cost as little as a penny apiece, and hardbacks rarely topped a single US dollar. The inventory consisted largely of remainders or possibly even of books reported by distributors as unsold and destroyed. And one book was everywhere: Fragments, the 1995 Holocaust fraud by Binjamin Wilkomirski. MORE

The Scottish parliament is considering a pardon for Helen Duncan, the last woman jailed under the Witchcraft Act of 1735.

Some initiatives -- such as this pardon -- have merit, even though their proponents are groups that exist in part to support those who have "experienced poltergeist activity." Helen Duncan spent nine months in the clink because she predicted the sinking of a British ship (an act of clairvoyance made admittedly less impressive by the fact that it was 1944, and British ships had U-boats snapping at their keels). MORE