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by Gabriel ShermanThe New Republic
Published as "The Greatest Love Story Ever Sold"
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. (Read the whole story)
The story turned out to be a hoax. (Read story)
2 comments:
Hi Zim,
THAT is not the whole story. Here is more of the whole story. Read this and post on it, too. The New Republic got all its info from me, and they never once thanked me, privately or publicly. Read this:
http://www.jossip.com/the-guy-who-wants-credit-for-breaking-the-latest-oprah-memoir-scandal-20090102/
The Guy Who Wants Credit for Breaking the Latest Oprah Memoir Scandal
Gabe Sherman's middleman?
JOSSIP REPORTS — Gabe Sherman and The New Republic are getting all the credit for bringing down Oprah's house, exposing Herman Rosenblat's supposed memoir Angel at the Fence as a not-entirely-based-in-fact work of semi-fiction. But what about the guy who gave Sherman the story? Now that Sherman has exposed the hoax and officially branded Oprah as a haven for fake memoirists, somebody else is demanding some credit of his own.
His name is Dan Bloom (pictured right), he's an ex-pat freelance journalist living in Taiwan, former newspaper editor, author of five books including My Excellent Adventures Selling Books from a Pushcart in the Night Markets of Taiwan, and he says it took endless begging to get Sherman — or any other reporter — to even look at his hunch that Rosenblat was lying to the world.
Sherman broke the story of the farce memoir the day after Christmas, promptly shooting an email blast to the media gaggle in hopes of publicizing his story. It worked. The Associated Press was all over it; all the media sites globbed on; and anyone who ever held ill will toward Oprah was more than happy to point out her latest folly.
And then, on Dec. 29, TNR's blog The Plank posted an explanation of how Sherman (pictured right) broke the story, which sounds more like an editor's attempt to juice a good scoop than a reporter yearning to explain his process. Wrote the editors: "Based on interviews with top scholars, Sherman concluded that Herman Rosenblat likely fabricated his story of having been saved in a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp by a girl who threw apples to him over the fence."
Missing from the summation? The crucial contribution Mr. Bloom says he made. If it weren't for Bloom looking up Sherman's name (Bloom says he found Sherman from a Slate article questioning the authenticity of Ishmael Beah's child soldier memoir) and pestering him to talk to certain people who could call bullshit on Rosenblat's memoir, the story never would've materialized, and Oprah wouldn't have egg on her face.
To be sure, Bloom says "Sherman did a terrific reporting job" and "deserves a Pulitzer." But he sounds like a very bitter source, or at least a bitter middleman. Unable to report the story himself — because of "promises to my sources deep with the investigation" — Bloom tried his damnedest for eight weeks to find someone who could. And if what he says is true, he succeeded — but wants everyone to at least shake his hand and issue a job well done.
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