Klaus-Bolko Kressin

Klaus-Bolko Kressin, a painter from Berlin, Germany, with a police record of aggravated theft, posed for decades as a Jewish Holocaust survivor under the name “Professor Dr. Dr. Moshe Mendelssohn”. In public talks he claimed to have survived the Dachau Concentration Camp as a child, while his parents and sister were allegedly gassed in that camp – although even orthodox scholars agree that no such gassings happened at Dachau. In May 2026, researchers from the German tabloid daily BILD confronted Kressin with documents exposing his entire Jewish biography, including his academic titles, as a fabricated legend. Kressin then admitted to have invented this story from scratch, claiming that he managed “to achieve something with it.” He promoted himself from a convicted felon to a celebrated academic artist and venerated “Holocaust survivor,” in the process undermining the credibility of survivor stories in general. (See Render/Saure 2026)