Career
Only the disclosure of Watt"s fabrications altered the status of the book which was initially praised by various Jewish organizations as the most important work written in Australia. In the book, Watt described being sent to Auschwitz concentration camp by the Nazis soon after he was recaptured trying to escape from a German Prisoner Of War camp. He claimed to have been forced to work as Sonderkommando in the crematorium attached to the gas chambers.
Reportedly, the fraud enabled Watt to receive monetary compensation from the Australian government as a Holocaust victim.
A number of institutions unknowingly associated themselves with the forgery partly because it was published with the financial help from the popular Jewish-Australian benefactor John Saunders. The memoir was discredited by historical experts from Yad Vashem, the Auschwitz Museum, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and, most importantly, by Professor Konrad Kwiet, historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum and the former chief historian of the Australian War Crimes Commission.
