BOOKS AND ARTS DECEMBER 25, 2008
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Update: On Saturday, December 27, Berkley Books announced that it is canceling publication of Angel at the Fence. Click here to read more about it.
On February 3, Berkley Books, the mass-market division of the Penguin Group, is slated to publish a Holocaust memoir titled Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived. The author, Herman Rosenblat, who is a retired television repairman now living in Miami, recounts his experience as a teenage boy during the Holocaust at Schlieben, a sub-division of the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp. In the winter of 1945, Herman meets a nine-year-old girl--herself a Jew masquerading as a Christian at a nearby farm--when she shows up one day outside the camp and tosses him an apple over the barbed-wire fence. For the next seven months, the girl at the fence delivers Herman food each day, until he is suddenly transferred to another camp. Fast forward to Coney Island, 1957: Herman, now in his 20s and settled in New York, reluctantly agrees to a blind date with a young Polish immigrant named Roma Radzicki. They speak of their time during the war. Roma mentions a boy she had helped to survive in a camp. She said she fed him apples. A flash of recognition. Months later, Herman marries Roma, his angel at the fence.
Since going public with his story a decade ago, Herman appeared twice on “The Oprah Winfrey Show”, who called it “the single greatest love story, in 22 years of doing this show, we've ever told on the air," and has been featured on the Hallmark Channel, Lifetime Television, and CBS News. He has been the subject of newspaper articles and inspirational mass-email chains. In March, a feature film, Flower of the Fence, based on Herman’s life, is scheduled to go into production with a budget of $25 million dollars. A children’s book, Angel Girl, was published in September. Berkley Books’ Angel at the Fence has all the makings to become a best-seller. Berkley’s winter catalogue for booksellers and reviewers describes Angel at the Fence as “the true story of a Holocaust survivor whose prayers for hope and love were answered,” noting that it makes “a perfect Valentine’s Day gift.”
The power of Herman’s narrative is largely due to the fact that the incredible story actually happened. Herman himself writes of his first encounter with Roma with such disbelief. “I noticed a small girl hiding behind a tree on the other side of the fence. I could scarcely believe my eyes,” an excerpt of his memoir in the Berkley catalogue reads. “Could this possibly be real?”
An increasing number of prominent Holocaust scholars say no. Though archival records show that Herman was interned in concentration camps during the war, scholars who are investigating the story believe that the central premise of his narrative--that a girl met him at the fence and that very girl became his wife--is, at the very least, an embellishment, and at worst, a wholesale fabrication.
Herman and Roma kept their amazing story private virtually their entire lives, according to Harris Salomon, the producer of Flower of the Fence, who remains close friends with Herman. One day in the early 1990s, Herman was shot by a burglar at the shop were he worked as a television repairman in Brooklyn. While in the hospital, Herman’s mother, who died in the Holocaust, came to him in a vision and told him he needed to share his love story with others, Salomon said Herman told him.
It was after this traumatic event that Herman and Roma started talking publicly about their epic meeting and reunion. On Valentine’s Day a few years later, according to Salomon, Herman entered a competition in a newspaper to award the most romantic story. Not surprisingly, he won. His story then made its way to the pages of Chicken Soup for the Couple’s Soul. Oprah Winfrey featured Herman and Roma on a special 1996 Valentine’s Day show, and again in November 2007. (A spokesperson for Oprah had no comment about whether they fact-check guests’ stories). Herman signed with the Ambassador Speaker’s Bureau, a conservative agency that represents clients like Alan Keyes and Stephen Baldwin (the evangelical brother of Alec and Billy). He also signed with literary agent Andrea Hurst, and in December of last year, sold the rights to his memoir to Berkley Books.
Professor Kenneth Waltzer, the director of the Jewish Studies program at Michigan State University, first began to doubt the truthfulness of Herman’s tale a couple of years ago, when he came across his story while researching his own forthcoming book about child prisoners at Buchenwald and its sub-camps.* Waltzer, who has not read the Herman’s manuscript, heard the story through Herman’s many print and television appearances. Waltzer’s main critique is that the book’s central premise--that Roma threw Herman apples over the fence outside the Schlieben camp in the winter of 1945--is an impossibility. Waltzer is one of the first scholars to draw on the recently opened Red Cross International Tracing Service Archives of Nazi-era documents on the camps. He also interviewed many of the survivors who were with Herman at the time. No one from Herman’s time in the camps could recall him ever mentioning a girl throwing apples over the fence or their remarkable reunion in America after the war. While, in theory, there is a slim chance Herman was able to conceal these meetings--and the apples he received--from his fellow prisoners, Waltzer concluded from studying maps of Schlieben that it was impossible for either a prisoner or civilian to approach the fence; the only spot where one could access the perimeter at all was right next to the SS barracks. “The story is a made-up story,” Waltzer told me by phone last week. “So far as I can discern, it didn’t happen.”
On December 9,* Waltzer interviewed Ben Helfgott, a Schlieben survivor who went through the Holocaust with Herman every step of the way, and never once heard of the girl at the fence until Herman spoke publicly of his story in the 1990s. Helfgott is upset that Herman has been telling this story and is publishing the book. “The story is a figment of his imagination,” Waltzer says Helfgott told him. “There is not a word of truth in what he is saying.” Waltzer says that Herman’s late older brother Sam told Helfgott he become “ashamed” when he had heard that Herman was telling his Holocaust love story. In March 2008, Helfgott scheduled a meeting with Herman in Florida to confront him about his issues with the book. Herman canceled the meeting the day before they were to meet. (Helfgott could not be reached for comment.)
“That he was able to meet at a fence with a girl in hiding every day through the winter months of 1945 without anybody knowing, or anybody seeing,” Waltzer said, “it’s just not plausible. She couldn’t get to the fence on her side, he couldn’t get to the fence on his side. They didn’t meet at the fence.” In his continuing efforts to corroborate Herman’s story, Waltzer is now trying to verify whether Roma’s family, the Radzickis, were living in the vicinity of Buchenwald at the time. Working with a local researcher, a preliminary search has yielded no record of the family. Waltzer says that he has also been consulting with specialists in the field of memoirs and literature, who “have quickly discounted [the book’s veracity]” and expressed concern “about the general issue of memoirs, memory, [and] truth.”
On November 21, Waltzer emailed Hurst, Herman’s agent, requesting a copy of the book, and mentioned the possible historical problems he discovered with the narrative. Hurst responded that review copies would be available in January, and any questions about the book needed to be addressed to Penguin’s public relations department, according to a copy of the email exchange provided by Waltzer. Waltzer followed up on November 25 with an email to Julia Fleischaker, the publicist in charge of the book. Getting no response, Waltzer sent an email the following week, on December 4, to the book’s editor, Natalee Rosenstein. After telling her of his academic credentials and forthcoming book on the subject, he wrote to her:
I am currently preparing to write a review of Herman Rosenblat's Angel at the Fence, to be published in February. […] I have considerable reason to believe that the story is at best embellished and perhaps invented. The story raises many questions that suggest doubtful veracity. I have no axe to grind, and I want to read the manuscript carefully and see what the final versions says or doesn't say. I'd be happy to be proved wrong in my suspicions.
Rosenstein never responded, Waltzer says. On December 20, Waltzer sent a similar email to Leslie Gelbman, the president, publisher, and editor-in-chief of Berkley Books, saying that Herman’s “timeline and numerous claims he offers in his story are erroneous, and survivors who were with him every step of the way have told me the story is a figment of his imagination.” Waltzer says he never received a response from Gelbman either.
For Penguin, the stakes are high. Last year, it was revealed that the memoir Love and Consequences, Margaret Seltzer’s story of running with Los Angeles gangs that was published by Penguin’s Riverhead division, was a fraud. It was pulled from bookshelves a week after it debuted. In recent years, the publishing industry has been whipsawed by a slate of memoir scandals, most famously James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. And last March, another Holocaust memoir, Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years, was exposed as a hoax.
On December 19, I called Rosenstein, the book’s editor, to inquire about Waltzer’s claims, and was told by her assistant to speak with Berkley Books’ publicity arm. When I called Fleischaker, the book’s publicist, to ask how the book was vetted, she said, “We have fact checked the book,” but then abruptly told me she needed to put me on hold; after a few minutes, she returned to tell me she could no longer speak about the book. “I’ll have to call you back,” she said. No one at Berkley has called me back or returned subsequent calls, despite numerous emails and phone messages seeking comment. When I called Rosenstein at her home number, she screamed, “How dare you call me at my home!” and hung up. No one at Penguin has responded to numerous requests for comment about Angel at the Fence, nor my requests to speak with the author, nor my request to receive a review copy of the book. Herman’s agent, Andrea Hurst, said in an email that all questions about the book need to be addressed to Berkley.
Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, who was appointed by President Clinton in 1994 to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, says she first heard Herman’s story while on a research trip to Auschwitz about the same time Waltzer started examining the narrative. Someone had read her an email chain that they had printed out that recounted Herman’s amazing love story. “I said, ‘I don’t believe it,’” she told me, recalling the episode.
Lipstadt, who wrote the 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust, is troubled by the possibility that Herman’s love story is fabricated, because she believes it could be co-opted by the Holocaust denial movement. “If you make up things about parts, you cast doubts on everything else,” Lipstadt told me. “When you think of the survivors who meticulously tell their story and are so desperate for people to believe, then if they’re making stories up about this, how do you know if Anne Frank is true? How do you know Elie Wiesel is true?”
In addition to the impossibility of being able to approach the fence, Lipstadt disputes other details of Herman’s story. “Based on what I have seen thus far, I would say that this story is not exactly a shining example of verisimilitude,” she wrote on her blog on December 15.
Over the summer, Harris Salomon, the president of Atlantic Overseas Pictures, the company producing the movie, contacted Lipstadt because she had posted a critique of Herman’s story on her blog. Salomon reacted angrily when Lipstadt pointed out factual problems with versions of the story circulating on the Internet. On June 24, Salomon responded in an email:
There is no point in me having an argument with you. I have to admit I have heard some harsh things about you since we started exchanging emails. Hothead is a word used by at least two of your peers in the Holocaust community. … Your opinion Deborah at the moment is worthless as you are making statements based on third party web sites that do not contain the words of Mr. Rosenblat or what is in his book. … I have traveled all over Eastern Europe for several years in preparation for what will be a major feature film. I may be more of a Holocaust expert then you, even though, I have no title nor university affiliation. What I do know for sure is before I make any statements I know the facts. You simply do not know those facts, and that Debroah [sic] is the greatest sin to the memory of all those perished so long ago.
Salomon is infuriated that Waltzer and Lipstadt are challenging Herman’s story. “Deborah Lipstadt has never read the book,” he told me when we spoke last week. “She has never spoken to Herman Rosenblat. I find that to be pretty disgusting.” Salomon told me he spoke on the phone with Waltzer this week, and said that Herman’s health has been suffering as a result of his questions, and that he would hold Waltzer personally liable for a decline in his health. “As a friend of Herman, I hold him responsible for what he says,” Salomon told me. Salomon also contacted a dean at Michigan State University to express his concerns about Waltzer’s research. “I would like to work this out,” he told the dean. “I don’t want to impinge on Ken Waltzer’s research, but the fact that he is speaking to you [The New Republic] is bloody repugnant. He’s going after a Holocaust survivor without any proof.”
Salomon conceded that memory could have distorted the literal truth of Herman’s story. “All too often when you write about love, you embellish things a little bit,” he says. When I pressed him on Waltzer’s specific claims--that it would have been impossible to approach the fence--Salomon didn’t respond directly or offer any third party source that could verify Herman’s story. But Salomon says he is extremely close to Herman, and believes his story, 100 percent. “I have my reputation vested in this story. I have my money vested in this story,” he said. “If anybody writes a memoir, there’s no way to know whether these things happened the way the individual wrote. You either believe, or don’t believe.”
Michael Berenbaum, the former director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, was asked by Salomon to vet the manuscript of Angel at the Fence. When I asked Berenbaum about his fact-checking methods, he said that he had read a copy of the manuscript over the course of an airplane flight, and that he did not conduct any interviews or historical research. He said his fact-checking involved assessing the narrative’s tone and general context, drawing on his extensive experience with survivor stories. When I asked Berenbaum if it would be possible for Roma to throw Herman apples over the fence day after day for seven months, he said he had no independent way to check the story. “I wasn’t there, I can’t vouch for it. But I don’t find it incredible,” Berenbaum said. “I see it as his memory. And with that comes some of the [problems] of memory, but I’m tolerant of those,” he said.
Berenbaum’s response illustrates the difficulty of applying journalistic or historical scrutiny to a survivor’s tale. Is the reality of a story how one remembers it, or how it actually happened? “Survivors have a knowledge of what they were doing, what they were feeling, a little bit of the way they were thinking,” Berenbaum told me, “but they don’t have a context of what it means. They didn’t have a calendar.”
For Lipstadt, that does not give license to Herman or others involved with his projects to market his story as true. “The most tragic part is that [Herman’s] embellishments have no impact at all on the essence of the story of his suffering,” Lipstadt told me me via email. “He invented a love story to go with it. I am not excusing him for doing this--of course this could be a false memory incident--but I am cautioning a note of sadness as opposed to some of the ‘gotcha’ things that are floating around.”
The battle over Angel at the Fence is part of a larger struggle for control over the Holocaust narrative. Scholars like Waltzer and Lipstadt are disturbed by the media blitz pushing Herman’s story to the masses. “My hair is standing on edge,” Lipstadt told me. “He has instrumentalized the Holocaust. This is the worst possible thing you can do on so many levels.” To them, selling the Holocaust as Hollywood kitsch sanitizes its horrors. “It makes it nice,” Lipstadt says. “I just wait to hear in the movie for the violins.”
Salomon, the movie producer, disagrees. He believes that the mass appeal of Herman’s story is precisely what makes it so important to be told. “The strength of Herman’s story is in Middle America,” Salomon said. “Because of the candy-coated message of this story, it has picked up resonance all over. Herman’s story can do more to teach people about the Jewish experience during the Holocaust in a way nothing before has done.”
Before our conversation ended, Salomon told me that I should go see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a new film that, like Herman’s tale, tells the story of a young boy at a concentration camp who befriends a German boy on the other side of the fence. I pointed out to Salomon that The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is based on a novel.
Gabriel Sherman is a special correspondent for The New Republic.
* Corrections: Professor Waltzer's book is about youths who were at Buchenwald and at Buchenwald sub-camps, including but not exclusively Schliebenbut, as was originally reported. Also, Waltzer spoke to Ben Helfgott on December 9, not December 8.
By Gabriel Sherman
67 comments
There is already a children's book in print with Rosenblat's story, "Angel Girl" by Laurie Friedman. According to the synopsis, "When Laurie Friedman first read a newspaper account of Herman Rosenblat's tale of survival, she was so moved she knew she had to find him and find a way to tell his story to children."
- thalhammer
December 23, 2008 at 2:29pm
Who knew that apples are in-season for seven months in Poland?
- mugamack
December 23, 2008 at 2:48pm
Gabriel Sherman writes a measured and detailed article on the controversy surrounding the "Angel At The Fence" story. This tale has been floating around the blogosphere for quite some time, in a number of versions. Some are relatively concise and some include a variety of additional details, some of them patently false. Mr. Salomon's argument is, "You didn't read the book." He refers to the ghost-written account that is due to be published. No, we did not read it, but we read the various versions that are available. We also listened to Herman and Roma talking about it in their own words: there was their Oprah appearance; there was Herman's interview on Israeli National Radio; there was their interview on CBS. So, we have plenty to go on. Last June, when I read one version of the story in an e-mail, it right away did not pass my smell test. I found most of its elements implausible, while some of them contradicted verifiable historical facts. Of course, I, as a survivor of six German concentration camps, look at it from the other side of the fence, so to speak. What the casual reader who goes ga-ga over this story of faith, and goodness and redemption through love needs to know is the story's context. The same goes for Mr. Salomon who styles himself an expert on the Holocaust. You have to know how things worked in a concentration camp, as well as the situation in Germany during during the severe, desperate winter of 1944-45. On June 6, 1944, the successful Normandy invasion took place. German forces were being squeezed between the Allied troops from the West and the Soviets from the East. The outcome of the war was no longer in doubt and the Germans knew it. The country was being bombed by the Allied air force every single day and every night. The country's production capacity was being destroyed. There were tremendous shortages -- of food and of everything you can think of. On July 20 a group of German officers attempted to assassinate Hitler and thoroughly botched the job. The regime went ballistic after that. Many German officers were executed and many more wound up in concentration camps. Many Germans were bombed out and had to seek shelter in other towns. There were roadblocks everywhere checking people's papers and checking whether they had a right to be where they were passing. In their paranoia, they looked for spies everywhere. They also looked for army deserters and, of course -- as always -- for Jews who may be hiding. So, here is 9-year old Roma, either in hiding or on a work farm, living with her family under a fake identity. She does not even speak German. Yet her family lets her walk out every day, mingle with the local population, and snoop around the most dangerous part of town -- the perimeter fence of the local concentration camp. On the other side of the fence, Herman takes his daily walk to the fence. High voltage electricity courses through the barbed wire fence. There are watchtowers all along the fence, manned around the clock. The duty of the tower guards is to keep everyone away from the fence. There is, in fact, a no-man's land on either side of the fence. We knew well that to you did not stray into it unless you wanted to commit suicide. Herman admits that he was well aware of this situation. In fact, he says, "If a guard had spotted us we would have been shot dead." Yet he finds a spot near the fence where he is invisible to the guards. So here comes Little Red Riding Hood -- here called Roma -- ambling down a country lane next to the camp fence. Magically, the guards do not see her. Magically, she has unlimited access to apples -- a fact that every single German in the country would have envied. She sees this boy on the other side of the fence. By his own description, Herman is gaunt, skeletal, dressed in rags. Yet Roma finds him "handsome, good looking." (Listen to the CBS interview for this piquant detail.) But of course magic can transform any frog into a prince. So, Roma throws him an apple. The guards never see it flying over the fence because the apple, too, is magical. "Every day for seven months I went to the fence and thew him an apple" says Roma. (That's 200 apples right there.) A Jewish mother hiding under an assumed identity lets this small child wonder outside on a daily basis, without knowing where she is going. And nobody ever challenged this foreign child. That's what we are being asked to believe. In a number of versions, Herman recounts how he warned Roma one day not to come anymore because he had information that he was going to be moved to another camp the next day. (I wish I had had such inside information whenever I was moved.) He days that he spent the last three months of the war in Theresienstadt. This was actually a ghetto, rather than a concentration camp and conditions were much better there. Yet Herman says, "On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM." There are only three things wrong with this statement. 1) Nobody ever received an advance appointment for execution in a gas chamber, for the simple reason that the Germans wanted to avoid any resistance on the part of the victims. 2) There was no gas chamber in Theresienstadt -- not then and not ever. 3) If Herman will take the trouble to check, he will find out that World War II in Europe ended officially on May 8. There are other statements that Herman and Roma made that are patently at odds with the truth, but for now I will rest my case with the above. I am painfully conscious of the fact that I am a member of a dying breed: in a couple of decades, concentration camp survivors will be extinct. The only thing that motivates me is the truth. Every fairy tale, no matter how compelling, diminishes the true story of the Holocaust and thereby diminishes me. Mr. Salomon, the self-styled Holocaust expert, has only one motive: money. As he says, "I have money invested in this story." And, as we found out from recent events, money is the ultimate god in this country. When anyone threatens his investment Salomon lashes out against them -- see his intemperate comments about Deborah Lipstadt and Kenneth Waltzer -- two scholars dedicated to the truth. The same goes for the people involved in publishing the book. They get very upset when someone threatens their investment. Michael Berenbaum is the only expert who has not come out to counter the story. He tries to straddle the fence. Not surprising since he is a paid consultant of the publisher. Kenneth Waltzer has interviewed other concentration camp survivors about this story. Every one of us thinks it is a hoax.
- Peter Kubicek
December 23, 2008 at 5:37pm
It is curious that no one mentions anything about Roma's side of the story. The focus has been on the veracity of the facts in Herman's narrative of his life in the camps. But I am much more interested in Roma's life - how she managed to move freely in wartime Germany as a Polish child who spoke no German, and how she came to have over 200 apples to share with friends while the rest of Europe was starving for a crust of bread. I challenge Mr. Salomon to provide documentation of where Roma and her family were located during the War. Roma's whereabouts during this period of time are a key piece of historical information that has been missing and could go a long way to avoiding endless discussion of Herman's faulty or repressed memory. How about it Mr. Salomon?
- Rose Rice
December 23, 2008 at 6:39pm
It is curious that no one mentions anything about Roma's side of the story. The focus has been on the veracity of the facts in Herman's narrative of his life in the camps. But I am much more interested in Roma's life - how she managed to move freely in wartime Germany as a Polish child who spoke no German, and how she came to have over 200 apples to share with friends while the rest of Europe was starving for a crust of bread. I challenge Mr. Salomon to provide documentation of where Roma and her family were located during the War. Roma's whereabouts during this period of time are a key piece of historical information that has been missing and could go a long way to avoiding endless discussion of Herman's faulty or repressed memory. How about it Mr. Salomon?
- Rose Rice
December 23, 2008 at 6:56pm
"For Penguin, the stakes are high." No shit. They're commercial divisions are not interested in accuracy. When I confronted one of their branches with the inaccuracies of Ian Buruma's 'Murder in Amsterdam', which was riddled with fabricated quotations and sloppy facts -- including about several colleagues of mine at the Law Faculty of Leiden University. Of course, the English speaking world had never heard the complaints of over 10 prominent Dutch men on the record in Dutch media about that book. Penguin didn't respond seriously, but merely that the next edition of the book had corrections -- but as far as I could discern, the fundamental fabrications of Buruma's book remained. Fact checking is apparently only for magazines.
-
December 23, 2008 at 8:43pm
Having read the article above, I think people should withhold judgement and read the book first. First, it makes sense, read the book when it comes out and then make up your own mind. This is an important story, I feel. Maybe it was a little embellished sure, all memoirs are. But I feel this is basically a real story. Nobody has read it, not even the reporter. So how can anyone criticize the book, if we have not read it? Give it a fair shake first. I am sure this old man did not write the book for fame or money, he is already too old for that stuff, to enjoy that, i mean he is 95 i read. So leave him alone. he suffered enough in life already. Can't anyone enjoy a positive life story? Does everything have to be sad bad news. I will buy a copy and then decide. There's no proof. Just some critics talking to the media.
- Felix Baumgartner
December 23, 2008 at 10:49pm
Having read the article above, I think people should withhold judgement and read the book first. First, it makes sense, read the book when it comes out and then make up your own mind. This is an important story, I feel. Maybe it was a little embellished sure, all memoirs are. But I feel this is basically a real story. Nobody has read it, not even the reporter. So how can anyone criticize the book, if we have not read it? Give it a fair shake first. I am sure this old man did not write the book for fame or money, he is already too old for that stuff, to enjoy that, i mean he is 95 i read. So leave him alone. he suffered enough in life already. Can't anyone enjoy a positive life story? Does everything have to be sad bad news. I will buy a copy and then decide. There's no proof. Just some critics talking to the media.
- Felix Baumgartner
December 23, 2008 at 10:54pm
Having read the entire news article on the New Republic website, I think people should read the book first. First, read the book when it comes out and then make up your own mind. This is an important story, I feel. Maybe it was a little embellished sure, all memoirs are a bit. But I feel this is basically a real story. Nobody here has read it. So how can you criticize the book, if you have not read it? Give it a fair shake first. I am sure this old man did not write the book for fame or money, he is already too old, to enjoy that, he is 95 i heard. So leave him alone. he suffered enough in life already. Can't anyone here enjoy a positive life story? Does everything have to be sad bad news. I will buy a copy and then decide. Not guilty until proven guilty, right? There's no proof.
- Felix
December 23, 2008 at 10:57pm
Yesterday afternoon I posted a lengthy, reasoned comment on this story. After clicking on "Post Comment" I received the advice that it would take a while before it shows up. Kindly advise me how this works. My e-mail is: pkubicek@verizon,net
- Peter Kubicek
December 24, 2008 at 9:53am
Why are more more Jews making up bogus stories about the Holocaust? Is it to make money or something? There are 6, count them, 6 Holocaust movies playing at the theater this Christmas...how many of them are pure fiction? We really need to revisit EXACTLY what happened to whom during WWII.
- Peter T
December 24, 2008 at 12:45pm
Whether this story is real or imagined is beside the point. It's a lovely story and people should read the book and see the film for what it says about the power of love. Those who question its authenticity are jealous, or, so serious that they can't see a different side to what happened to one boy in the camps.
- tamara moscowitz
December 24, 2008 at 3:39pm
The holocaust is just a lot of zionist BS!
- JD
December 24, 2008 at 5:25pm
Spare apples no less, that a child could take without notice. What is disturbing is the choice to downplay the horrors and tell a fake "heart warming" story in order to win a contest for most romantic story. It is disturbing how few people know enough about concentration camp conditions and the atmosphere of terrorization in holocaust Germany to know right away that of course this story is a fake. It is disturbing how people turn away from the truth about history and about human nature, and to believe this story requires a willful turning away from the most difficult truths. I recommend reading a dozen legitimate narratives good history books to begin to get a hint of the quality of the experience. I say a hint because you can’t know what the hollowing out of all normalcy is like. Past and future disappear when one is terrorized and starving. The idea that the any concentration camp prisoner could have that kind of freedom within a camp reflects ignorance of the nightmare camp experience created by genocidal Germans. There was intensive surveillance. No freedom. No plans to make and keep. Lice. Filth. Freezing. Teeth falling out. The fence was electrified. Beatings. Starvation. Murder everywhere. The idea that "love" is on anybodys mind while they face starvation and death and see people die horrible death is all around them is disturbing. The claim that both Herman and Roma would betray their families is also discordant. Herman would have shared food with his starving brother. He didn't. Why? Because he didn't have it. Roma’s family or hiders would not let her go out like this. Wouldn’t Polish Jew stand out Germany? That a movie maker and book publisher would try to shut down informed exploration of these claims and willingly compound these errors is shameful.
- E. Heilman
December 25, 2008 at 12:05pm
Wow, you sound like quite the German pragmatist.
- naysayers
December 25, 2008 at 7:26pm
"I may be more of a Holocaust expert then you, even though, I have no title nor university affiliation." That should read "then [sic] you."
- Drick
December 26, 2008 at 12:47am
RE: post above: "Why are more more Jews making up bogus stories about the Holocaust? Is it to make money or something? There are 6, count them, 6 Holocaust movies playing at the theater this Christmas...how many of them are pure fiction? We really need to revisit EXACTLY what happened to whom during WWII." See? The antisemites come out the woodwork, as soon as anything remotely antisemitical (to them) gets published in the papers. Jews, money, Holocaust. Sir, we KNOW what happened to WHOM during WWII. This is not about Holocaust denial. This is about the Jewish comunity policing one of their own. Mr Roseblatt did not write this for money or fame. He is too old for that. He wrote it for his own reasons, which we still do not know. But please go somewhere else with your Holocaust Denial stuff. There are plenty of websites for you to spill your demon seed.
- Noah Yagi
December 26, 2008 at 4:21am
Mugamack: For the sake of accuracy, the setting here is the Buchenwald concentration camp, which was not located in Poland.
- Mark
December 26, 2008 at 6:12am
Move over Bernie Madoff here comes another rip-off on the public supported by Mother Oprah.
- gary behun
December 26, 2008 at 12:31pm
Felix Baumgartner: Having read the article above, I think people should withhold judgement and read the book first. First, it makes sense, read the book when it comes out and then make up your own mind<< Sound advice. But don't you think that the publisher should make review copies available to journalists and others so they may fairly critique the book? As someone who has worked in newspapers, I know that publishers usually are enthusiastically generous with review copies of coming publications. It's curious that this publishing house is ducking inquiries and withholding copies of the book for review.
- Sharon Gibson
December 26, 2008 at 2:37pm
I think it's ironic that Salomon recommended that the writer see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It's not only a work of fiction, it's bad fiction which beggars credulity.
- Sharon Gibson
December 26, 2008 at 3:01pm
"I may be more of a Holocaust expert then you, even though, I have no title nor university affiliation." That should read "then [sic] you." Grammar Nazi!
- Couldn't resist...
December 26, 2008 at 11:27pm
Who is more disgusting, the publishing industry or the film industry? No comment on the morons who posted here, "Reserve judgment" and "So what if it isn't true?"
- Mandy
December 27, 2008 at 1:54pm
Herman's confession (as I imagine it might have been, had it he confessed earlier): "Look, please, I am an old man, and my memory is like an old people, sometimes I don't get everything right, but the purpose of telling the apples over the fence story, and the blind date girl being the same girl who threw me those apples over the fence, well, maybe it's not completely true, maybe my memory was playing tricks on me, these things happen as we age, you know, but as I tried to put the story together piece by piece, and as me and Roma talked about our love and long marriage for many years, we often talked about what it might be like to put our story into a book or a movie, so we began trying to recall things that happened in those awful days when we were just kids, teens, Roma was 8 or 9, and maybe it was not HER at the fence, and maybe there were no APPLES thrown over any fence, maybe this was a dream I was recalling, you know, dreams and memories and old age, it can get confusing, but as far as I can tell and remember, these things or something like this, happened, but yes, maybe not the way we told it to Oprah or to the AP or to dear Laurie Friedman the nice book writer lady, maybe we sort of got caught up in fibs and exaggerations and memory problems, but the main thing is I love Roma, have always loved her, we were meant to be, we have had a long and happy marriage, and if she was not really the girl at the fence, who knows, only God knows, and if there was no fence, who knows, only God knows, but why should anyone care, the main thing is God willing, we have lived this far so far and we survived the Holocaust, so why is anyone questioning us. We wanted to tell a good story, no? Isn't that story a good story? Isn't that kids book a good story? And the movie they are going to make, it will be a good story, too. So what if there were no apples or no fence, and Roma was not the girl at the fence that was not there, so what? It's a story. God loves good stories. God gave us this story. Enjoy the story. Stop investigating us. We are good Jews. Isn't that enough?" NOTE: Herman did not start talking about his blind date cockamamie story and apples over the fence story until after the 1992 robbery and shooting at his TV repair store in the Bronx, in which his son Ken was also shot and is still confined to a wheelchair as a result, and Herman went into O.R. for surgery at the ER for the loss of blood. One theory circuatling among critics of his fabricated backstory is that it was during the robbery/recuperation/medical drugs period after 1992 shooting that Herman got it into his head this cockamamie story. Perhaps it was a vision induced by drugs, his mother appeared in dream, in the camps long ago, in dream state she said Herman, i bring you an angel, this angel girl will save your life, as I give my life to you, and this angel girl, you will meet here again on a blind date in the city of NYC, Coney Island to be exact, and this dreamstate vision is what fueled Herman's feverish mind, to have escaped death once, in the camps, and second time, in the shooting in the Bronx. A good psychiatrist can unravel this later.
- Felix Baumgartner
December 27, 2008 at 10:38pm
This leaves me with a doubt. Did the concentration camps really exist or is it the greatest hoax of all times. My friend Ben says they all lie since they control the media, books etc.
- Alaska Joe
December 28, 2008 at 12:02am
I have poured over the meticulous records and documents kept by the Nazis at the time. I have conducted research at several camps, including Buchenwald, and have seen drawings by survivors who showed inmates who dared to approach the fences being shot. All this leads me to question the veracity of the story. Yet I have to ask, why? Why after surviving the Holocaust, emigrating to the U.S., finding love aand raising a family did Rosenblat feel the need to spin this tale? Perhaps the memories were too terrible to admit to himself. Perhaps he himself needed to believe that there was some greater meaning behind being robbed of his mother, his homeland, his youth, than simply having been born Jewish? Is there not something utterly human in the need to believe that love can triumph over even the worst horror humanity has been able to inflict upon itself?
- Berlin
December 28, 2008 at 6:04am
I'm reminded of the epigraph Elena Bonner, widow of Andrei Sakharov, wrote in one of her memoirs of the Stalin era: "Did this really happen?" "I don't know." "Is it true?" "Yes".
- Cathy Fitzpatrick
December 28, 2008 at 9:39pm
Not the only thing Oprah endorsed this year that was a hoax.
- Brian
December 29, 2008 at 6:25am
Thank you for your time and effort Mr. Kubicek in revealing the falsified nature of this story. As a history major and one who took a few classes in the Holocaust, on its face this make believe story is ludicrous. To believe that in the last few months of the war there was an endless supply of magical apples lying around is beyond ludicrous. Then that the SS and the Gestapo, who were crawling all over the few parts of German territory that the Reich still possessed would not notice a kid wandering around day after day NEAR A CONCENTRATION CAMP PERIMETER
- 1LT Jarred Fishman
December 29, 2008 at 1:23pm
More fuel for the deniers' fires that the Holocaust never happened. Nice going, Mr. Rosenblat.
- Chat Hayes
December 29, 2008 at 2:04pm
The story is bogus. The guy who wrote it has admitted this. End of story. Now shut up, all of you.
- Kris k.
December 29, 2008 at 2:19pm
I am amazed that some morons posting here are tying this lie to that Wall Street Madoff guy and other Jewish people. Your race or religion doesn't have anything to do with if you are a liar or not. People tell lies for attention or money. ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE DO THIS. I definitely feel that any book that is marketed as "fact" "truth" needs to be vetted! I think this book would make a great novel. I am black and remember when Alex Haley had some plagerism in his book ROOTS. Then I heard Delores Kearns Goodwin had "issues" with one of her books. So, let us agree that lying is an equal opportunity employer. We all know George Washington didn't really chop down the cherry tree.
- Nancy
December 29, 2008 at 3:56pm
Mister Peter Kubicek is so right! I live in Holland, a country which lost a lot of people during the war. Anne Frank is one of those beautiful and couragious people. To even question if her story is true or false, makes me so mad! Anne Frank lived in Amsterdam. Every fact in her book is checked and double checked. There are pictures and witnesses to prove all the content. When I saw Herman on Oprah, my first thought were the apples as well. A whole lot of people died of hunger that period. In total six million people lost their lives. Nobody should question that or write a fictional book about it. I do find it so stupid that no publisher or any so called journalist in the US ever questioned the story. It's so obvious. But then again, it isn't American History, so the most 'powerful' country in the world doesn't really care. It's just another story to sell and make money of.
- Agnes
December 29, 2008 at 5:52pm
This hoax is a tragedy. I don't understand why Atlantic Pictures is still proceeding to make a film based on a lie. I also don't understand how Oprah could have publicized this story, especially after James Frey and given that many bloggers like Deborah Lipstadt said in 2007 that the Rosenblat's story couldn't be true. There are so many other worthwhile projects based on true love stories from the Holocaust like the one about Dina Gottliebova Babbitt - the beautiful young woman who painted Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on the children's barracks at Auschwitz to cheer them up - and after the liberation met and married the animator who did the original Disney movie. Now that's a beautiful love story - and it is real and true. I also love Dina's story because of her tremendous courage to paint the mural in the first place, which caused her to have to stand up to Dr. Mengele, the Angel of Death. She was so brave to stand up to Mengele and convince him to make her his portrait painter, saving herself and her mother from the gas chamber. Some of these paintings Dina did for Mengele survived the war and are at the Auschwitz Birkenau Museum, and the story of her painting the mural of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on the children's barrack has been corroborated by many other Auschwitz prisoners, and of course her love and marriage to the animator of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the Disney movie after the war in Paris is also documented, so Dina's story is true beyond any doubt. Why wasn't the Rosenblatt's story checked out before it was published and picked up to have the movie made?? I would like to see true and wonderful stories like Dina's be publicized, not these hoax tales that destroy credibility and trust.
- susan
December 29, 2008 at 6:14pm
All isn't lost ----- One of the things important about history is to remember the true history." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 6, 2008 After reading a pre-publication Reader's Digest version of the book, an excited President Bush personally telephoned Mr. Rosenblat to ask him if he would consider writing a historical revision of the President's 2 terms in office. The president said “Frankly Blattie, I like your writing style and I think you’d do a fabulous job at truthifing (sic) my presidential history”. Bush asked for Mr. Rosenblat help to set his 8 year chronicle straight by “un-writing” (sic) the many untruths published in the New York Times and countless other newspapers and journals. The President went on to emphasize that this newly rewritten historical collection would permanently reside in his soon to be built Presidential Library, nicknamed the Freedom Bastion. The President envisions neocon scholars from the Hudson Institute, the Federalist Society and like minded think tanks sourcing Mr. Rosenblat‘s rewritings into their future Wall Street Journal editorials designed to counter rampant liberalism and negate pointy-headed peace proposals. Separately, the library will also host a permanently endowed commentary research “Fact Room” for the exclusive use of the Fox News TV Network. Bush said, through a spokesperson, that just because there are a few anti-Semitic doubters about the story’s accuracy doesn’t mean it could not be true and that the book’s universal veracities still speak to him and the 25% (and growing) American public who still support the him. Bush stated that he felt a special kindred spirit with Mr. Rosenblat because, like the writer, he too had been (and still is) maliciously labeled a liar by the liberal press. He encouraged the author who the President considers “A great American patriot and true friend of Israel” to come on board with the rewriting project. In passing and with a wink, Bush reminded Mr. Rosenblat that Paulie still had a few billion to use at President’s discretion -- before January 20th, that is! As of this writing, Mr. Rosenblat has not yet responded to the President’s offer.
- Jim
December 29, 2008 at 6:32pm
This sick made up story once again shows how the holocaust is unscrupelously exploited by certain jewish persons and certain jewish pressuregroups. For a real description of this phenomen everybody should read the publications of Norman Finkelstein on this subject. It is these stories and made up events during WW2 that gives the israelis the so called "excuse "to perpetuate their evil politics. More then 60 years after the holocaust I think that the credit is over. You can´t continue forever abusing missery and suffering as an excuse to fulfill political goals by abusing others, who haven´t a thing to do with the jewish missery during WW2 . What is happening right now in Gaza is an exact copy of the extermination committed by the nazis in Warschau. The Gaza strip is more extended, but the palestinian people, whatever you think of their politics or behaviour are suffering the same way as the jews did in beleagered Warschau Getto. I think it ´s time to to put up spectacles which are more critical and more balanced towards israeli politics. What is the difference is, that now the whole western world calls the Palestinians terrorists in chorus with the israelis. In the war the jewish resistance was only called a terrorist organistaion by the Nazis
- Muskens
December 30, 2008 at 7:32am
This book is no more a fraud than is "Night" by Elie Wiesel, who tells of Jews being thrown alive into burning pits, a claim categorically refuted by the researchers and guides at Auschwitz, who are trained at Yad Vashem, the most famous Holocaust memorial in Israel. An account of Wiesel's two older sisters (who also survived) is completely missing along with the fact that his younger sister and mother died of typhus, not in a homocidal gas chamber. Even in the preface to the new edition, also feted by Oprah Winfrey, Wiesel claims that Ilse Koch (the sadistic wife of the commander of Buchenwald) "was allowed to have children and live happily ever after" -- a total lie, since she was sentenced to prison where she hung herself in 1967. But his publisher, Hill and Wang, refused to correct even this obvious fabrication so as not to offend The Great Weasel who is their best selling author.
- Daniel McGowan
December 30, 2008 at 7:49am
your comment is as sick as the liers who tried to explode once again WW2 by false stories. The same way as do the sick jewish organisations all over the world in order to suck out money or defend the sick politics of their homeland. Not long ago I read something of a zionist defender who introduced the word judeocide. Disgusting. As your jewish religion mates are monopolizing all the press for your interests you try to monopolize history by asserting that only the jews were the victims in WW2. Don´t you think the Gypsies, the communists, the social democrats, the homosexuals, the free masons were victims aswell. Not in your opinion. And that narrowminded view gives your homeland the excuse to slowly exterminate an inncocent people in Palestine. What a sick people you are. You say you are a good Jew? I think you are an exemple of a disgusting being.
- muskens
December 30, 2008 at 7:56am
In 1982, the Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, summarized his thesis before an audience of nearly 2,700 at Avery Fischer Hall in New York City: the entire German policy for the physical destruction of the Jews was to be explained by mind reading! No document attesting to this criminal policy could be found, because no such document existed. For several years, the entire German bureaucratic machinery operated through a kind of telepathy. As Hilberg put it: "But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They [these measures] were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus -- mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy." Let me note again those final words: "an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus -- mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy." AMAZING!
- Michael Santomauro
December 30, 2008 at 11:03am
They put people in prison in Europe for questioning these tales. You don't put people in prison for questioning the truth. You put them in prison to shut them up for questioning lies. This is why all eye witness accounts need to be investigated. There is too much money being made off lies. Hats of to the new republic. I will be reading them very regularly now.
- Peter K
December 30, 2008 at 11:04am
If you believe that, you are nuts, read, and you'll learn that history confirms this terrible period.
- S. Hendricks
December 30, 2008 at 1:11pm
I can appreciate a love story too, however, one should not market a book as a Memoir if in fact it is not, even worse, is to gain profit from a such an unjustice is cruel, I am not Jewish, but I have a great deal of respect for what the Jewish people went through, I read Night by Elie Wiesel- I just can't imagine someone exploiting the situation for the purpose of wealth.
- S. Hendricks
December 30, 2008 at 1:19pm
I agree, some are posting responses out of hate for the Jewish people, but as stated, and unfortunately, there are dishonest people in all races, this isn't about the Jewish people being deceptive,and to anyone who believes such a thing, is ignorant, plain and simple.
- S. Hendricks
December 30, 2008 at 1:39pm
In today's post, when they asked his sister-in-law why he did it, she said MONEY. So, for the sentimentalists who think he was trying to spread love and good will...wake up.
- Alfredo
December 30, 2008 at 5:02pm
I would like to know what narratives are recommended by one of those responding to the article, where accurate narratives would give us a true historical perspective.
- James F Anderson
December 31, 2008 at 5:21am
I have just completed a holocaust/WWII/POW novel that took more than 10 years to research. My main focus was authenticity. I wanted to educate the reader as to the actual conditions of the camps and the resiliency of the people because i am frustrated with the quality of manuscripts available and the constant publication of nonsense. My late father was a POW and I wanted to tell his story and the story of others with integrity. In order to condense my research into a novel I had to consolidate characters and fill in holes in the story. Consequently, I am marketing my manuscript as historical fiction based on real events. Although I am represented by a high profile New York agent, the publishers that have read my work to date are not interested in authenticity. It seems to be irrelevant to them. It is not at all surprising to me that his situation has occurred again. Nonsense sells. Until now, I have refused to betray my story with misinformation. However, my manuscript remains unpublished.
- Anna
December 31, 2008 at 12:51pm
Love can triumph but to say they strolled to the fence everyday for snack time DENIES that it was all that bad. Love can't triumph everywhere. Listen to Delbo: It is an infant, that bundle of rags she is clutching. It became obvious when she shifted the upper part of the bundle, turning it outward a little, to help it breathe perhaps, now that daylight has come. Quickly she shelters the baby’s face again and hugs it tighter then she shifts the bundle of rags to her other arm, and we see the infant’s head lolling, bluish, almost black. With a gentle movement she raises the baby’s head, props it in the hollow between her arm and her breast, and again she lifts her eyes, and again the impression she gives is of tension and fierceness, with her unbearable stare. The SS arrive. All the women stiffen as they move down the ranks, counting. That lasts a long time. A long time. Finally, one side is done. You can put your hands back in the sleeves of your jacket, you can hunch up your shoulders, as if it were possible to make yourself a smaller target for the cold. I look at the Gypsy holding her baby pressed against her. It’s dead, isn’t it? Yes, it’s dead. Its purplish head, almost black, falls back when not supported by the Gypsy’s hand. For how long has it been dead, cradled in its mother’s arms, this rag-swaddled infant? For hours, perhaps for days. The SS move past. Counting the ranks of the Gypsies. They do not see the woman with the dead baby and the frightening eyes. A whistle blows. The roll-call is over. We break formation. Again we slide and fall on the sheet of ice, now spotted here and there with diarrhea.
- Elizabeth
January 2, 2009 at 4:18pm
Clearly one needs to looks with caution at the claims and endorsements made by the Oprah Winfrey organisation who now have managed to not bother with verifying stories on two occasions. How one could not have questioned some of the very basic claims made by this man is astonishing and I for one am going to regard her guests and claims in the same class as the Jerry Springer Show although I suspect they are more genuine.
- WHL
January 3, 2009 at 5:40am
It's all a call to forgive, to find the innocence, to love (ourselves, others, our evolution out of a painful darkness). Either that, or the suffering ratchets up globally. In the end, Love prevails. Maybe that's what all good stories tell us.
- Janice
January 3, 2009 at 11:08am
Who's George Washington?
- Huh?
January 3, 2009 at 11:31am
The story is patently false as borne out by the cold hard facts. It would have been far better had it been presented purely as a work of fiction with believable details, and NOT as a Holocaust story.
- cindylou
January 3, 2009 at 11:58am
You have problems.
- Tadpole
January 3, 2009 at 12:49pm
In Soviet Russia, apples throw you..
- jmh
January 3, 2009 at 1:40pm
Who of us hasn't made something up to feel more important? Be honest with yourself... whether it's the size of the fish you caught, or the size of something else (hint hint)... Why are some of you so amazed that an old man would embellish a story like this?! An old man that spent his post war life as a lackluster TV repair man no less... I understand the frustration expressed by others that were there in the camps... It's difficult to listen to someone fabricate parts of a story you were a part of, I understand. At what point though are we just angry that we didn't make it up first?! I urge you to focus more on the 'story'... because that's just what it is, and less on why it feels so satisfying for (most of) you to discretit someone for it. Was Herman's biggest mistake not publishing this as fiction in the first place...? I think so...
- Reason
January 3, 2009 at 1:57pm
bottom line is it's all a crock of bull...a big fat lie...nothing more than a fabrication purely and simply to capitalize on holocaust sympathy...it's a lie ..full stop..nothing more to say about it.
- SURE
January 3, 2009 at 3:47pm
As the saying goes.... Theres no business like Shoah business
- mp
January 3, 2009 at 5:44pm
I want to thank Gabriel Sherman for exposing this clown. The movie people, book people, cbs news, oprah are all either idiots or greedy scoundrals who just want to capitalize on this. Its great to know the holocost survivors in the camps with him revealed him to be a liar. Im shocked most of the rabbis in the media said they were either just shocked or saddened. They should condem him hardcore. He should be humiliated for this
- pond
January 3, 2009 at 5:57pm
I am guessing Rosenblat has come to believe the story he wrote to win a contest. I am inclined to believe he did not initially intend to defraud anyone, that he wrote a love story (part of which may have been from a faulty or embellished memory). To me, the solution here is simple: With obvious factual issues, it should not be marketed as true. With people already questioning the truth of the Holocaust, I think it is all the more important to scrutinize stories involving the Holocaust to make sure they are true so as not to give the doubters additional ammunition. So, if this is in fact a great love story, which it seems to be, can it not be marketed as such with a disclaimer like we see on TV all the time: "not a portrayal of actual events; inspired by true events"? It sounds like a story people would love -- let them love it. Just tell them it is only a story. (That said, even with a disclaimer, enough people will ultimately believe it to be true. (So I see the danger there.) Remember Ronald Reagan's memory of a bomber pilot saving his crew in WWII, and how it turned out to be a scene from a movie he was in? I am sure Mr. Reagan actually believed that as well.) Intentions were good -- memory was faulty -- let's preserve the facts and let the story be told in a novel.
- Simple Simon
January 3, 2009 at 7:33pm
It's the fact that he's gotten a ton of notoriety (not to mention money) claiming the story was true when it wasn't. And as for that "power of love" nonsense--I could say my husband's prayers cured my cancer but if it's a lie, where's the power in that? Also, Tamara, the people who question this story are neither jealous or too serious. We seek the truth. If your story is fiction and you say it's fiction, awesome. If it's a good story I wanna hear it. If you're trying to make a buck (or, in this case, a few hundred thousand bucks) by lying, then, no, that's not cool. You saying that anyone who has the nerve to question a story that's being billed as true is jealous makes me doubt your credibility, also. It's like saying "What does the truth matter as long as you get the warm fuzzies?" Your argument doesn't hold water.
- Lizvert
January 4, 2009 at 2:17am
Thank God for The New Republic's investigative journalism and quest for truth. The mainstream media cannot be trusted to deliver truth, even a [true] love story. God grant Mr. and Mrs. Rosenblat serenity as they reconcile themselves to the aftermath of a thoroughly public humiliation. They have suffered, yes. They have also been blessed. They survived the Holocaust, one great blessing; they met each other and enjoyed a long and happy marriage, another great blessing; and they have family and friends who love them. May they find consolation in their blessings as they recover from the shootings and other challenges they now face. And may they live many more years together in good health.
- Saphhireyes
January 4, 2009 at 5:06am
buchenwald was in central germany not poland - moron- learn your geography and history first before posting misinformation like that - dumbass
- stanley
January 4, 2009 at 11:42pm
Has the TNR ever acknowledged that Danny Bloom first reported this news of the hoax on October 15, in a public website, and again on Dec. 6, under his name both times, and that he gave Mr Sherman all the info he needed to take the book down, info that Mr BLoom provided to Gabe on his own dime his own dime, he found Gabe and spilled the beans, in other words, and has the tNR or Gabe ever said "thank you danny" to danny? Not once. What's up with that? Is "thank you" a dirty word now in America? As TNR knows, Gabe never heard of Herman or this hoax book until I called him up and stayed on the line for 3 days and 3 nights until he finally broke down and took me seriousl, because at first he didn;t believe one word I was telling him, based on my 8 weeks of prior digging and publishing. Doesn't a citizen journalist and a lone blogger far away overseas get any credit for this take down? Or does TNR claim they did all by themselves? Whatever happened to truth? You are not telling the truth here, not all of it any rate... and I love Gabe, he did a great job and I THANK HIM. He might get down off his high horse and thank ME just once, even a brief email. Nada. Nothing frm the man. WTF? And i say all this not in bitterness, as jossip mistakenly saw it, but in humor and good fun. This story was never about ME, anyways, this was about truth and hoaxes and the publuishing indstury and the memory of the Holcaoust. A sad story. I do not want credit. I want a short sweet "thank you" from master ace reporter Gabe, who got this entire story from my mouth and emails. I pestered him for 72 hours until he broke down. WHy doesn;t he admit that somewhere? SMILE....o life
- Danny Bloom
January 6, 2009 at 2:00am
Danny Bloom reported nothing -- he suspected, he wrote his suspicions on blogs, he badgered journalists to take up the issue -- but Danny Bloom knew nothing. It took a group of serious investigators who work with evidence to create the basis for reporting. Danny Bloom still doesn't understand the difference between noise and knowledge.
- Ken Waltzer
January 7, 2009 at 2:11pm
I saw them on It's a Miracle" 10 years ago. I never,ever forgot this story. I always looked to see if there was any news or updates with the couple. This story gave me a feeling that love really exists in this sick, disturb world. I totally believed these people. (see the version on Its a miracle TV show.) I really only wished I never saw anything on-line about this story being false! I lost all hope in people and not do I only feel betrayed but I feel I betrayed all of the people who I told. ( I told at least 100 in the last 10 years). Ignorance is bliss!
- deb
January 30, 2009 at 11:17pm
Felix - I agree But I did read the book. I received an advance copy before Penguin decided to pull it. I just got around to reading it last week knowing nothing about the controversy. I was so in love with the book I started telling people about it. I couldn't wait for the finished project to hit the stores. Yesterday I'm telling my sister about this amazing book that I had read and she tells me its not true and the book isn't coming out. My first reaction was anger. How could I get sucked in like that. I felt so good after reading it and then to be let down like that. How could someone do that. Now I find myself wondering what else in the story wasn't true. All of Mr Rosenblat's horrific years in the concentration camps and I just don't think I can beleive it. I'm sure his heart was in the right place but I am still feeling very angry and betrayed by the whole thing.
- Donnalee
February 17, 2009 at 12:31pm
Ken Waltzer does not have his facts right. Danny Bloom reported news about the hoax first on October 15 and again on December 6. News articles, Ken, not blogs. When you shoot first and ask questions later, you look foolish, even with your PHD behind your name. You are a great researcher, but your EQ is very low. Still, I admire and respect what you did on the research, and the larger team itself. But please, hold your fire, sir. You know NOT what you say. Danny re: post no. 64 above: "Danny Bloom *reported* nothing -- he suspected, he wrote his suspicions on blogs, he badgered journalists to take up the issue -- but Danny Bloom *knew* nothing. It took a group of serious investigators YES YES TRUE! who work with evidence to create the basis for reporting. Danny Bloom still doesn't understand the difference between noise and knowledge. [''BUT HE DOES KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN prima donnas with PHDS and academics with poise.'']
- Danny Bloom
February 21, 2009 at 12:52am
Even if I bought the story of the "Apple Girl of Buchenwald," I could never believe they just happened to meet years later on a blind date on a different continent. The old guy was carried away. It was a good story, though, and I'd like to read it. He was exploited (as we are) by that cow, Oprah Winfrey. No offense to cows. The worst thing Mr. Rosenblat could do now is go on her awful show and let her beat him up over this.
- Randall Hodge
April 3, 2009 at 7:26pm