Holocaust memoir of love is exposed as being a hoax

A purported Holocaust memoir has been exposed as a fraud, prompting Berkley Books to cancel publication plans for the love story involving a concentration camp prisoner and the woman who became his wife.

The February 3 publication date was abruptly cancelled at the weekend, however, when Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA)
"Berkley Books is cancelling publication of Angel at the Fence after receiving new information from Herman Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst," the publisher said in a release.

The company has also asked Rosenblat to return the money it gave him for his book.

Rosenblat and his wife admitted the book's story of their romance was made up.

"I wanted to bring happiness to people," Rosenblat said Sunday. "I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world."

That may have been his intention, but the result has been a lot of wounded people, including his literary agent.

"Herman Rosenblat and his wife are the most gentle, loving, beautiful people," Hurst said. "I question why I never questioned it. I believed it.

"It was an incredible, hope-filled story."

A work of memory

This marks a major about-face for the publisher, which had defended the book to critics, saying it was a work of memory and only the author knew the whole truth.

The Rosenblats' story was also the subject of a children's book, Angel Girl by Laurie Friedman, published earlier this year.

Several detractors say Rosenblat could never have met his wife the way he described.

According to the story told by Miami-based Rosenblat and his wife, Roma Radzicky, he was a prisoner at a sub-camp of Buchenwald in Nazi Germany and she was a young Jewish girl whose family was pretending to be Christian and lived nearby.

The lovebirds would meet on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence, where she would slip him apples and bread. Rosenblat claimed he was then transferred to another camp and the two lost touch until the 1950s, when they were reunited by accident, on a blind date, in New York.

The couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary earlier this year.

'Single greatest love story'

Oprah Winfrey, who twice invited Mr Rosenblat on to her talk show, hailed the book as “the single greatest love story ... we've ever told on air”. The still-unpublished memoir became the basis for a children's book and $25 million (£17 million) feature film, The Flower of the Fence, which is due to start shooting in March

Rosenblat's believers included not only his agent and his publisher, and Oprah Winfrey, but also film producers, journalists, family members, school children and strangers online who ignored, or didn't know about, the warnings from scholars and skeptics that his story didn't make sense.

Historical scholars had doubted the story, noting the layout of the sub-camp made such an encounter at the fence virtually impossible because the couple would have met right next to an SS barracks.

Other Holocaust memoirists have devised greater fantasies. Misha Defonseca, author of Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, pretended she was a Jewish girl who lived with wolves during the war, when she was revealed that she was in fact actually not Jewish, who lived, without wolves, in Belgium.

Historical records prove Rosenblat was indeed at Buchenwald and other camps.

"How sad that he felt he had to embellish a life of surviving the Holocaust and of being married for half a century," said Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum.

The damage is broad. Publishing, the most trusting of industries, has again been burned by a memoir that fact-checking might have prevented. Berkley is an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), which in March pulled Margaret B. Jones' Love and Consequences after the author acknowledged she had invented her story of gang life in Los Angeles. Oprah Winfrey fell, as she did with James Frey, for a narrative of suffering and redemption better suited for television than for history.

"If I ever take on another memoir, they're going to have to prove everything, every line," Literary agent Adrea Hurst says. "From now on, I may just stick to basic fiction and nonfiction."

The damage is deep.

Among those fooled, or at least the partially fooled, was Berenbaum, former director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Berenbaum had been asked to read the manuscript by film producer Harris Salomon, who still plans an adaptation of the book.

Berenbaum's tentative support — "Crazier things have happened," he told The Associated Press last fall — was cited by the publisher as it initially defended the book. Berenbaum now says he saw factual errors, including Rosenblat's description of Theresienstadt, the camp from which he was eventually liberated, but didn't think of challenging the love story.

"There's a limit to what I can verify, because I was not there," he says. "I can verify the general historical narrative, but in my research I rely upon the survivors to present the specifics of their existence with integrity. When they don't, they destroy so much and they ruin so much, and that's terrible."

"I was burned," he added. "And I have to read books more skeptically because I was burned."

The story was first exposed by the New Republic magazine. Ben Helfgott, a former Schlieben inmate, told the magazine that Mr Rosenblat's story was “simply an invention”. Mr Rosenblat joins the swelling ranks of discredited memorists. “I wanted to bring happiness to people,” he said. “I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world.”

The New Republic article quoted friends and family members who were outraged by Rosenblat. One of his brothers stopped speaking to him.

Rosenblat's story also upset other Holocaust survivors, according to Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Lipstadt said the survivors didn't believe the tale either.

"How sad that he felt he had to embellish a life of surviving the Holocaust and of being married for half a century," said Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum, who himself was duped.

Berenbaum had said the general outline of the Rosenblat romance was likely true but now he says he was "burned."

"In my research, I rely upon the survivors to present the specifics of their existence with integrity. When they don't, they destroy so much and they ruin so much."

Scholars and fellow survivors fear that Rosenblat's fabrications will only encourage doubts about the Holocaust.

"I am very worried because many of us speak to thousands of students each year," says Sidney Finkel, a longtime friend of Rosenblat's and a fellow survivor. "We go before audiences. We tell them a story and now some people will question what I experienced."

"This was not Holocaust education but miseducation," Ken Waltzer, director of Jewish Studies at Michigan State University, said in a statement.

"Holocaust experience is not heartwarming, it is heart rending. All this shows something about the broad unwillingness in our culture to confront the difficult knowledge of the Holocaust," Waltzer said. "All the more important then to have real memoirs that tell of real experience in the camps."

Despite the revelations, The film's producer plans to go ahead with the movie. Harris Salomon, of Atlantic Overseas Pictures, said he had always planned a “loose and fictionalized adaptation”.

I'm guessing... so did Mr. Rosenblat.