THE PLANK DECEMBER 28, 2008
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The Rosenblat family is coming to terms with the revelations exposed by TNR that Herman Rosenblat lied about his love story that he met his future wife outside the fence of the Schlieben concentration camp, which formed the central premise of his Holocaust memoir, Angel at the Fence. This afternoon, I spoke with Herman's son Ken Rosenblat, who is still stunned by his father's deception. Ken told me by phone
that he had in fact known of his parents' lie for many years but hadn't
been able to stop them. "My father is a man who I don’t know. I can’t
understand it. It’s not my way of thinking," Ken said. "I didn’t agree
with it. I didn’t want anything to do with it. I tried to just stay
away from it. It was always hurtful. I just never dealt with it."
For Ken, his father's invented story is especially painful. Herman says he fabricated the story while recovering from a shooting at his electronics store in Brooklyn which left him critically injured in the hospital. Ken was also shot, and today remains in a wheelchair. "It’s something I don’t like to talk about. It’s not something I like to live with," Ken said.
When
I asked Ken how his parents could have lived a double life for some 15
years, he explained that for his mother, who survived the Holocaust as
a child by hiding as a Polish Catholic, living with an assumed identity
was almost natural. "My mother lived a life of hiding. It was natural
for them to lie, to cheat, and this is something that they lived with,"
he told me. "This is something they knew, and they lived. And they
continually lived with that. It’s very difficult for my father to
confront what they’ve done."
Even after the news had broken, he said he had barely spoken with his father.
--Gabriel Sherman
7 comments
I know, TNR, that it's tough now that the election is over to understand what your mission in life should be. But your compulsive vendetta against the Rosenblatts, and days of self-congratulations on debunking his book are unbecoming, and frankly coming close to convincing me you have no editorial direction worthy of the name.
You've won guys - the man has been exposed as a fabricator for all the world to see. We know it makes you feel good about yourselves (although I'll be damned if I can figure out why), but now give it a rest, please.
- sdemuth
December 29, 2008 at 8:44am
Gabriel Sherman-
You write: "When I asked Ken how his parents could have lived a double life for some 15 years, he explained that for his mother, who survived the Holocaust as a child by hiding as a Polish Catholic, living with an assumed identity was almost natural. 'My mother lived a life of hiding. It was natural for them to lie, to cheat, and this is something that they lived with,' he told me."
One way to see the deception perpetrated by Herman Rosenblat and his wife is that it may derive, at least in part, from the terrible suffering inflicted upon them during the Holocaust. To live with such overwhelming horrors, I would suggest, can twist a man's mind, distort his judgment, eat away at his very soul, even decades after the fact.
This is not to exuse those lies, but simply to try to understand them, place them within a context.
Add to this the mindless elevation of victimhood in this country, the mindless celebration of victimhood on talk show after talk show after talk show--the proclaiming of one's wounds, of being praised and respected for the mere fact of one's wounds (not for the manner in which one has responded to them)--add this into the mix, and the credulous celebration of the Rosenblats' fabricated suffering (like the credulous celebration of James Frey's fabricated suffering) seems as much a reflection of the corruption of our culture as of the liars themselves.
I would refer you to a line from Norman Manea (who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp as a child, and then, as an adult, was a dissident under Ceausescu):
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"Suffering. . .corrupts," writes Norman Manea, "and suffering peddled publicly corrupts absolutely."
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- JosephCuomo
December 29, 2008 at 9:21am
JosephCuomo's thoughtful remark that "the deception perpetrated by Herman Rosenblat and his wife is that it may derive, at least in part, from the terrible suffering inflicted upon them" is of course true, but there is another, equally interesting potential contributor here: if false in the literal sense, the story that Herman Rosenblat was in some sense rescued by his wife, and by unexpected love, may not be all that false. Do we know what she has meant to him, as he lived through a live touched early and deeply by the terror and torture of Schleiben? Could she not have thrown him many daily "apples" over a lifetime lived together, that were equally valuable as an actual apple might have been in 1944/45?
I don't know, of course, but I think it a strange reaction by people who count themselves among the descendants of Moses and Abraham, to be so hard on a literal untruth that may represent a deeper metaphorical truth. Is an apple saving the "life" of Herman Rosenblat not a smaller version of the kind of truth that would have Moses parting the Red Sea, or Abraham's hand literally stayed mid-blow in his mission to slaugher his son?
- sdemuth
December 29, 2008 at 10:15am
sdemuth, I agree. At least they are not whining about Caroline Kennedy.
- blackton
December 29, 2008 at 10:30am
Last week, TNR published an article by Gabriel Sherman, whose original reporting revealed that a new
- Anonymous
December 29, 2008 at 12:20pm
Sdemuth - re: your first comment here, my feelings exactly.
- jobeek2
December 30, 2008 at 1:42pm
Forensic Genealogy for Writers by Sharon Sergeant: Update 12/30/2008 Herman and Roma Rosenblat
- Anonymous
January 6, 2009 at 7:12pm