I googled it too, and the answer seems to depend on whether people like Kosiński or not.  In fact, there's one guy who claims that he wrote the book rather than Kosiński.  Where does that put it on the continuum between fact and fiction?

The edition I read said nothing whatsoever about it being factual.

This review of a bio on Kosinski gives a balanced perspective on Kosinski himself:
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9610/myers.html

Koskinski himself veered a middle path of letting the book be sold as fiction even as he kept on saying that the book was based on his life (I believe Frey has taken a similar approach where he says his book is exaggerated but still has similarities to his life).

In the end, even though I disagree with the representation of such exaggerations or outright untruths as nonfiction, I sympathize with these writers, particularly those who were children during the war such as Kosinski.  Even if his life was not as horrific as he depicted in The Painted Bird, it must have been horrifying enough.  

This is somewhat of a non-sequitur, but I am reminded of when the Turkish government admitted that they had very much inflated the numbers of the dead after an earthquake in the 90s.  The Turkish government said that they thought it was the only way to get the international aid they needed.  

And perhaps such writers who inflate the problems of their own lives believe that it is only by making their lives even more horrifying that they will get the attention and sympathy that they might crave.  And unfortunately, the numbers of sales for these books could indicate that they are right.

My only point was that when I read it, as part of a course on literary criticism, I was totally unaware, much like you, that there even was a question as to it being a memoir. I was not aware that the author apparently claimed that some parts were factual. So any controversy regarding the book was a surprise to me.

It's an interesting point to consider from both sides. I was recently speaking with someone who has written a memoir about some of the things her and her family have been through (far more contemporary than WWII). She is reluctant to divulge a lot of the details in print and thus will likely have to fictionalize parts of it to protect some people's identity.

Certainly, it is a different issue than merely making up salacious details to make people more eager to read it but how much different really? Once you fictionalize it somewhat, how much further does one want to go to 'get the word out.' A memoir is decidedly one person's perspective so how much worse is it if they simply remember things incorrectly?

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

I would make several distinctions of memoir "ethics" in regards to this discussion.

When the memoir is meant to shed light on the events of a larger historical event, such as WWII, whether the writer fictionalized the facts of their life or not seems very relevant.

Where the memoir is more about personal details of their lives and their family and not meant to be about historical events, I think the question is more open as how each member of the family saw an event differs.  

However, I would also toss out the caveat that it is my personal feeling that memoirs are less subject to critical scrutiny of writing style.  James Frey's Million Little Pieces was supposedly originally shopped as fiction and turned down.  Even though I haven't read more than an excerpt, I found the writing tiresome (although I know many people who disagree with me on this point).

I've also wondered whether some of the public reaction to the Frey controversy was because readers felt they had been duped and that they had been made into fools (it certainly seemed as though Oprah felt very personally affronted by the whole thing).

As far as I know, in the US it cannot be shown in a normal cinema session open to the public. It is shown only to restricted audiences (history students, etc) and not without proper previous brainwashing (they call it 'contextualizing'). The mechanism to assure this, by the way, is that the rights of the film are in special hands. Guess who's! If you have other information, please tell me, I will reconsider my claim and put the movie on the playlist of my cinema in Mushpokee, Tennessee, just to see how free we are.

Well, that's another thing then - but your beef there should be with copyright law, not with hate speech laws. You're intentionally conflating those issues. If you yourself raised the money to make a similar movie, you'd be more than free to do so, and to screen it wherever you felt like.

That's what your grandfather would have said when told that Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor and let it happen.

There you go again. It's funny to me that you accuse ms. sue up thread of having a religious faith in the existence of the holocaust - when you yourself express a religious faith in its non-existence (and a wide variety of other conspiracy theories). I suppose we have nothing to say to each other. You will continue to believe what you believe no matter what is said here, so what's the point?

By the way: at the end of the war, when, as we all know, democracy won over tyranny, there were 5 presidents: Stalin, Truman, Churchill, de Gaulle and Hitler. Only one of them was ever elected by public vote. Guess who? That's such a canard. Roosevelt was elected President by popular vote and Truman ran on that ticket as VP. Truman also won re-election by popular vote. It is true de Gaulle didn't win election at the time of the war, but he did win many free and fair elections after the war. Finally, Churchill wasn't ever a "president" he was Prime Minister, and he won his own district by popular vote and was then voted PM by Parliament. This, by the way, is similar to the way which Hitler won his position, so I'm not exactly sure what your point is...in fact Hitler never actually took the title of President or won such a title in multi-party elections. He was appointed Chancellor (the German equivalent of PM) in 1933 and then declared himself Fuhrer upon the death of Hindenberg (who was the elected German president) in 1934. While a plebiscite was held in 1934 to affirm this, a plebiscite is something different than a multi-party election (since you can either vote "yes" or "no" - you don't have a choice of candidates). And yes, Stalin was a dictator and by no means a friend of democracy. Nobody disagrees with you on that.

Churchill ... was then voted PM by Parliament. This, by the way, is similar to the way which Hitler won his position,

Absolutely not. Since you don't understand the difference, let me explain:

The normal way to become PM in GB is through popular vote: the head of the party winning the elections will become PM.
This was not the case for Churchill. He was never voted head of state through popular vote, but became PM through a maneuver behind the scene - not illegal, of course, but nothing to do with a popular vote, which BTW, he didn't even get after 1945 as 'war hero'.

On the contrary, Hitler, as chief of the party winning the elections, was voted leader of his country by the people.

The fact that in both cases, Germany and GB, a parliament vote is required and some 'president' (or queen) is formally naming him, is of no importance at all for my argument. I thought you would have noticed that.

The normal way to become PM in GB is through popular vote: the head of the party winning the elections will become PM.

Yes and no - Parliament votes on who should be the PM, period.  Sometimes this happens right after Parliament is elected, sometimes the PM steps down half way between elections and a new PM is voted in his place (this is how Gordon Brown, the UK's current PM, came to power, as well as former PM John Major, who came to power after a Conservative Part revolt booted Thatcher out).  This is exactly how Churchill came to power - the Conservative Party (of which Churchill was a member) had the upper hand in Parliament.  Their PM was Neville Chamberlain, but he resigned after the fiasco of "appeasement" and was succeeded by Churchill.  Parliament still had to formally vote to make him PM (and they did).  The main difference between Churchill and Brown or Major is that the latter two were selected by Conservative Party back-room negotiations, while Churchill was selected by a more non-partisan group, as they were looking to form a national coalition government which all parties could support.  Also, while it is true that Churchill lost in 1945, his party did win election in 1951 and he served for another 4 years as PM before resigning.  Since you are so upset about Churchill I'm surprised you are okay with how Hitler came to power.  After all, his party did not win a majority of the seats in the Reichstag (they had about 33%) - if the opposition had been able to form a unified front, it could have easily kept him from being appointed Chancellor.

sure, it was meant as a little joke in this sinister discussion. Don't hook on the title 'president', call it 'leader'.
But formally that little joke is true: the only leader elected as such was Hitler (Roosevelt was not president at the end of the war).

I'm not sure why, but I feel compelled to keep responding...

Strange argument: So wrt the grandfathers of 'modern' Germans, every lie can be told and every trash poured on them. It is not 'hate speech' since they are dead and not a race anyway. But then why 'Judd Suess' is hate? The Jews the film refers to, are dead since centuries!

The difference is that, lies or not, the attacks directed at the Nazis are directed entirely at those dead Germans. They are in no way considered to be relevant to modern times - nobody watching a Holocaust documentary would feel hatred towards modern Germans. Maybe you would feel hatred towards modern Nazis, but that's different - because being a Nazi is a choice of political ideology, and generally political ideologies aren't considered to be protected classes (especially not in the US, where hate speech laws are pretty weak anyway). The only strongly protected classes are race and religion. Gender receives some protection (especially in employment law). Sexual orientation may receive some protection, but only due to state law - there's no real federal law protection there. Political ideology receives some protection, but mainly in the realm of employment law (i.e. some states make it illegal to fire someone for their political views). We generally allow political propaganda or what have you when it's directed at political ideologies (i.e. nobody's trying to prosecute Anne Coulter for hate speech, even though her books are full of half-truths and innuendo targeting liberals and Democrats. Ditto Michael Moore, even though his films are filled with similar vindictives towards conservatives and Republicans). Those watching Judd Suess or what have you, on the other hand, are projecting those same criticisms on modern, living, breathing Jews (and are using their viewings / screenings of Judd Suess to reinforce or promulgate those ideas).

everyone universally agrees that Hitler was  a crazy, warmongering asshat.

Uuuh? Got your history lessons from the back of (kosher) Cornflakes packet ?

Or did the Jews drive him to do it?

Of course the Jews had their share of responsibility in both wars, but that's not the discussion of this thread.

There is no discussion. You are either a troll or a rabid anti-Semite. And I have never called anyone the latter on this or any other site. There are no facts or evidence that would ever satisfy people like you. And certainly no personal data will be forthcoming from me.

Humans, even those not technically "crazy," have the propensity for evils beyond what I can even imagine. I wish I could understand what motivates such people, but I know that I never will.

Regardless of your motivation, you are one person whom I actually would put on ignore if we had that function here. Until then, I will try to avoid your spewings.

Do you really believe that we, generally with some exceptions, support democratic regimes and oppose authoritarian regimes?

Yeah, I didn't really feel comfortable writing that but I couldn't think of a better way to phrase it and I was writing the post on a time crunch. I agree more with what you said than what I actually wrote.

I guess once again I should have thought a little bit more before I posted. To completely clarify, I agree with this statement "We generally give the title "resistance fighter" to those engaged in asymmetric warfare against regimes which we oppose, and lay the term "terrorist" on those engaged in asymmetric warfare against regimes which we support" completely. That said, I do think that we generally rhetorically support democratic regimes and rhetorically oppose authoritarian regimes. The problem is that we also rhetorically support "liberal" (i.e. Western in political culture and willing to join in / live by the rules of the Western trade regime) regimes over "illiberal" regimes (non-Western political culture and/or not willing to open their economies), and finally "in practice" we almost always support "strategically important" friendly regimes, whether they are democratic,authoritarian, or even occasionally genocidal. Hence our foreign policy appears to be essentially schizophrenic.

I don't think it's unfair to say, though, that the US would prefer the entire world to be made up of democratically elected, "liberal" regimes, as long as said countries were willing to pay lip service to abiding by the American-generated world order and not actively opposing "American interests" (whatever they're defined at the time). I can't think of any example of the US supporting an authoritarian regime "just for the hell of it", but I can think of (a few, rare) examples of the US supporting or at least tolerating democracies even when it was inconvenient for us to do so. So, I don't think it's a simple thing either way - yes, the US generally acts in its own interests, but whenever strategic interests aren't perceived to be involved, I think we generally at least try to promote democracy. For example - it would have been much easier (and in fact possibly a better idea) to simply install another strong man in Iraq, but we did try to organize elections and install a democratic government. Ditto Afghanistan. In both cases the implementation has been poor, but the effort was made. I also think it's fair and important to point out that a large number of democracy promotion groups and organizations are made up of US citizens and operate out of and sometimes with the support of the US government (and often in opposition to the US government). Because of this, "the US" isn't always a unitary actor, which makes generalizations even more impossible to develop.