I've no doubt it's been done but it must be difficult to live a lie. Eventually, of course, you'd become the person you are in this new episode of your life, but with no personal history that didn't include your old life, any close relationships you tried to develop might be on shaky ground.
Only if you have separated the past from the future. Otherwise it is still the present and you will wind up taking the present with you and you will still have the present, well, present.
On the other hand, I doubt that any of the survivors at Auschwitz would have been able to start their new life building on the grounds of the old camp. Sometimes it's necessary in order to start over in a different place.
Well not many people in my life currently knows about me growing up in the ghetto and on welfare. They think I've been posh the day I was born.
You don't have to lie about where you came from. You just don't tell them everything, or anything. I have moved lots in my life because of my husband's job. Most assumed I grew up middle class and hold at least a bachelor's degree. Neither of those are true. If they didn't ask, I usually didn't offer the information.
Mind you, I am not ashamed of my upbringing. I just don't share becuase some people put their own perceptions on that information. I had one person who kept giving me backhanded compliments after my husband had changed jobs. She was his boss' wife so I couldn't really do anything about it. In any other case I would have had some "compliments" I could have given back.
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