Henryk Batuta hoax

Henryk Batuta was a hoax article on the Polish Wikipedia from November 2004 to February 2006, the main element of which was a biographical article about a nonexistent socialist revolutionary, Henryk Batuta. History The perpetrators of the hoax created an article about Henryk Batuta (born Izaak Apfelbaum), a fictional socialist revolutionary and Polish Communist. The fake biography said Batuta was born in Odesa, Ukraine, in 1898 and participated in the Russian Civil War. The article was created on November 8, 2004 and was exposed as a hoax 15 months later, when it was deleted on February 5, 2006. The article was ten sentences long while it existed on Polish Wikipedia. It gained some prominence after stories about it appeared in prominent Polish newspapers (e.g. Gazeta Wyborcza) and magazines (e.g. Przekrój), as well as a British newspaper (The Observer). The article also falsely claimed a street in Warsaw was named "Henryk Batuta Street", after the fictional communist official. The anonymous hoaxers who created the article, according to the press calling themselves "The Batuta Army", allegedly wanted to draw attention to the fact that there are still places in Poland named after former communist officials who "do not deserve the honour".