Hingst, Marie Sophie

Marie Sophie Hingst (20 Oct. 1987 – 17 July 2019) was a German citizen of Protestant faith with a PhD in history. In a series of blog posts, she falsely portrayed the paternal side of her ancestors as Jewish. She claimed that 22 of her invented Jewish ancestors had died in the Holocaust. She submitted claims to that effect to Yad Vashem’s victim database, where these 22 fake Holocaust victims were promptly accepted. Hingst’s fraud was publicly exposed in 2019 by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel (Doerry 2019). After her false identity had collapsed, she committed suicide. This is a case of a subsequent-generation false witness with a tragic end. (See the entry on False Witnesses.)