The news that Herman Rosenblat’s Holocaust memoir “Angel at the Fence” is a fraud has the press buzzing and the publishing world reeling. The book, which the publisher apparently anticipated would be a best-seller, was pulled right before it was to be shipped to bookstores. No one who has paid close attention to the story, however, has a right to be surprised.
I first heard Rosenblat’s story in June of 2007. I was on a bus headed to Birkenau together with other scholars who study genocide. None of them were Holocaust specialists. One passenger began to read aloud from an e-mail he had received about a boy in Buchenwald who was saved because a young girl threw him an apple over the camp fence every day for seven months. Years later, the two met as adults. He learned that her family had been slave laborers in the nearby town. They were posing as non-Jews. They fell in love, married and recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.
Long before my fellow passenger got to the fairy tale ending, I was skeptical. How could a young girl stand at a concentration camp fence without guards noticing? Would a Jewish family passing as Polish non-Jews permit their daughter to wander around near the camp? Could a prisoner go near the fence without being shot? Was the fence low enough for a small girl to throw an apple over?
When the professor finished, I declared, “Fiction. Bad fiction.” Some of the scholars suspected that years of skirmishes with Holocaust deniers had made me a hardened skeptic. After later coming across numerous renditions of the story — which, it turned out, was all over the Internet — and learning that the Rosenblats had appeared on “Oprah,” that a children’s book on the story was already published and that a memoir and film were forthcoming, I felt I could no longer remain silent. On my blog I stated that this story could not be true. The attacks came in quick succession: How could I question Holocaust survivors? Who was I to defame them?
The most vituperative attack came from Harris Salomon, who was making a film based on Rosenblat’s story. In an e-mail to me, he pronounced my opinion “worthless.” He declared that, since he had traveled throughout Eastern Europe doing research, “i may be more of a more of a [sic] holocaust expert then you.” He closed by accusing me of having committed “the greatest sin to the memory of all those perished so long ago.”
In the interim, Michigan State University historian Ken Waltzer, an expert on Buchenwald, had done the research that reporters, publishers and producers did not do. He spoke with historians who knew the layout of this sub-camp and with people who were interned there with Rosenblat. The story was clearly a lie.
The New Republic’s Gabriel Sherman spoke with additional survivors who further confirmed that this was a hoax. Even Rosenblat’s sister-in-law admitted never having heard the story of the girl with the apples, either at the Rosenblats’ wedding or in the 40 years that followed.
In response to the growing scrutiny, Salomon went ballistic. He complained to one of Waltzer’s deans and intimated that he would hold Waltzer “responsible” if Rosenblat’s health suffered because of the questions being raised about his memoir. The publisher, Penguin’s Berkley Books, stonewalled anyone who contacted them.
When Sherman found yet more survivors who contradicted Rosenblat’s story, the whole thing fell apart. The publisher pulled the book. Rosenblat admitted making up the story. Suddenly, Salomon, the great historian, told the press that he was “extremely angry” about being the victim of a scam (although he has said he still plans to make his film, albeit now as an acknowledged work of fiction).
Sadly, Herman Rosenblat overshadowed his genuine Holocaust story with a completely fabricated one. What really happened to him and his family has been lost in his lies.
There are various lessons to be learned from this: Facts about the Holocaust must be checked. Historians should never build their understanding of events based on one story from one person. But Rosenblat had enablers. His publisher, agent and movie producer pounced on his story. Reporters never bothered to check it out. They all seemingly wanted a story that made the Holocaust heartwarming, even though, as Waltzer aptly put it, the “Holocaust experience is not heartwarming, it is heart rending.”
Salomon believed that this kind of “candy-coated message” would reach “Middle America” and “do more to teach people about the Jewish experience during the Holocaust in a way nothing before has done.” Jewish sources also allowed themselves to be co-opted. Aish HaTorah featured the story on its Web site. A Chabad rabbi, whose relatives died in the Holocaust, was swept off his feet by this phony tale and arranged a belated bar mitzvah for Herman, garnering even more publicity for the Rosenblats and himself.
I have spent much of my academic career studying Holocaust denial. But the much greater danger to our collective memory of the event is posed by Holocaust trivialization and romanticization. What the Rosenblats and their enablers did was create yet another obstacle for the remaining survivors to convince others that their stories are true.
Rosenblat claims that all he wanted to do was make people love each other more. The Chabad rabbi probably thought the story would inspire faith. Salomon wanted to teach Middle America about the Holocaust.
These may be worthy goals. But the Holocaust should not be reduced to a means for trying to fulfill these or any other ends. The instrumentalization of the Holocaust, the use of it to fulfill something else, is the ultimate degradation of the event. If Holocaust deniers were smart, they would sit back and let the Rosenblats, Salomons, Berkley Books and the like peddle their wares. Within a short time, no one would know what was truth and what was fiction.
Deborah E. Lipstadt is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. She is the author of “History on Trial: My Day in Court With David Irving” (Ecco, 2005).
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Aish.com immediately removed the article once Prof Lipstadt and a survivor wrote us, casting doubt on the veracity of the story. We were completely flabbergasted that Rosenblat would tell such a boldface lie, and do such damage to Holocaust studies. Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith editor, aish.com
Ms. Liptadt fails to mention that she and Mr. Waltzer made their initial attacks on Mr. Rosenblat without reading a page of his book. Had Lipstadt or Waltzer contacted me and asked for a copy of the book prior to November 2008 I would have sent them one. How can any historian make the claims Lipstadt and Waltzer made without even reading the book they are attacking? It is clear they were initially basing their attacks off information off the internet not what was in Mr. Rosenblat's book. Lipstadt and Waltzer need to understand Herman Rosenblat wrote his book from his memory. As a Holocaust survivor his memory was shaded by events either real or imagined in his own mind that caused him to actually believe what he said. For him the war never ended and he created a love story in his own mind to help him survive. You might say it was a real life, "Life is Beautiful". So what do we actually have here? We have two holocaust experts discrediting a Holocuast survivor because he wrote what was in his own mind about love story that he imagined was his. I would hope someone of the caliber of Ms. Lipstadt would have more important things to do then attacking a love story? Lipstadt and Waltzer don't control the Holocaust narritive in America. If they had spent more time trying to understand what was in the mind of Mr. Rosenblat and less time making headlines for themselves, perhaps this story would have had softer landing? One might wonder with all the concerns Lipstadt and Waltzer had why they didnt inform Oprah of their concerns? Did Waltzer inform her and she just didn't listen? If that is the case I would suspect he should be enraged with the her for not pulling the show before it aired or even making a statement afterwards? I suppose he probably would not want to talk about that now if he wants to someday get on the Oprah Show with his own book? My company, Atlantic Overseas Pictures is producing the film based on Herman Rosenblat's life because we believe it is a beautiful story. A story that Mr. Rosenblat believed is true. If Mr. Rosenblat created a love life for himself that was better then his reality, Ill give him the benifit of the doubt. No one in this country has the right to bully or censor an idea or story they dont agree with. Mr. Rosenblat did not lie about the terrible events of the Holocaust. He was in the camps and he did suffer more then Lipstadt and Waltzer can ever imagine in their their cozy university offices. If he wants to tell a fib about his love life, let him. Lipstadt and Waltzer should also know my company is using its vested story rights to release a book based on Rosenblat's wartime story that tells the story as he remembers it. Ill even send them both a copy personally so they can base their attacks on a book they have actually read! Mr. Roseblat told me yesterday his wife had indeed thrown an apple to a boy during the war. It wasnt him though. In his mind, to help him live with a war that often still rages, he used that sweet story to help him cope to the point where he actually believed it. This is what battle over the Herman Rosenblat story is all about. Harris Salomon President Atlantic Overseas Pictures New York-London
boldface lie or baldfaced lie? I always get confused?
Sir?............DID YOU MEAN BALD OR BLOD?????? [BLAD] I Nechemia Coopersmith said: Aish.com immediately removed the article once Prof Lipstadt and a survivor wrote us, casting doubt on the veracity of the story. We were completely flabbergasted that Rosenblat would tell such a boldface BALDFACED OR BOLDFACED??????? [LOD] lie, and do such damage to Holocaust studies. Rabbi Nechemia Coopersmith editor, aish.com
Is the correct term 'bold face lie' or 'bald faced lie' or another variation? In: Word and Phrase Origins [Edit categories] [Edit] [Edit] Answer The more correct term is "bald faced or bare faced lie" (bare is more common in Great Britain). It refers to a "shameless" or "brazen" lie. One where the teller does not attempt to hide his face while telling it. It's just the last 5 yrs or so that "bold" has come into usage. It refers to typeface. It is used metaphorically in speech. In the same way that a typesetter uses bold face type to highlight specific text and set it apart, a bold face lie stands out in such a way as to not be mistaken for the truth. More Information The phrase can either be used as bold-faced lie, as in someone with a bold enough face to lie (bold meaning daring) or someone bold enough to lie to your face; it can also be used as bald-faced lie, where the older meaning of bald (meaning uncovered or unconcealed) - the more correct usage with this term is bare-faced lie.
I admire Mrs Lipstadt as a great scholar in field of Holocaust history and in same time I see that even after more than 50 years is very hard for speacking about Holocaust and it become more to more harder do the young generations for understand a so deep tragedy that marked our peoples. Because it I have same asking questions for Mrs Deborah Lipstadt and I hope that no one will not feel offensed by my asking questions because my intention is not to offense or argue and I want to not deny no one. My asking questions are these 1.Who is her opinion about movies as "The Pianist", "Schindler's list" and "Train of life", "Life is beautiful"? All are movies about Holocaust. 2.Who she think that we can speack about Holocaust and who we may close with our explications about Holocaust by teens for speacking about this shoah for their minds but beggining from realities of our days that do me very pesimistic that teens will understand: they play very violents games on computers who they kill virtually hundreds of peoples and that teens from our day are very easy attracted by neo-nazi organisations-in special in Europe and East Europe- that have as target more to more younger teens even kids by age of stories and Holocaust before be history was reality. A love story may do opening speaking about these to teens more easy? (Dont forgote that kids of our days like not so much for read serious books of history or they read only for an exam or other) 3)Who are the treasures, the psychological treasures of a survivor from Holocaust if she may tell more about it and if the survivors speack easy about so traumatizing experience? 4)Why a fiction about Holocaust is so danger and why it may not be a door for a serious research? 5)Who would be better for speack about Holocaust to average persons that are not specialist in history and has a source of informations tv programms and news papers? I hope that I didnt offense no one with my asking questions and if i did I ask ny excuses from all that may be offensed by my words. I want not glory, not argue and I want only for know who is the better way for speack about it. I did put these asking questions because I live in a East European country and last month an old Jewish Cemetery was wandalized by same teenagers and it happen even they has at history also lessons about Holocaust.
What a self-serving, sanctimonious, hypocritical comment by Harris Salomon! All he knows is how to attack and denigrate others, while pretending that no blame attaches to a saint like him. The spurious "Apple Over the Fence" story was in the public domain and all over the blogosphere for a long time. There was absolutely no need to wait for the publication of a ghost-written book before discrediting the Rosenblat lies. If Harold Salomon -- and the many other facilitators of this hoax -- had had half a brain -- and I know that this is an audacious assumption -- they would have shown the story to three concentration camp survivors and said, "Here, look at this. What do you think?" And every one of us would have told him instantly that most of the elements of the story were implausible, while some were contrary to verifiable historical facts. Mr. Rosenblat and his facilitators have done irreparable damage to the cause of truth about the Holocaust. This spurious tale diminishes the Holocaust and thus diminish me and my fellow-survivors.
so peter why didnt mr. waltzer and ms. lipstad take their charges to oprah winfrey last november after he appeared? or as i suggest maybe they did? life is not black and white peter. neither is the story of the jewish people or the holocaust. the holocaust story told in america is true and has been framed by some very wonderful people who presented it over the past 50 years. for many reasons it is not the entire story. here in america we hear little about the massacre of jews in romania or present day ukraine. their experiences have largely stayed out of the naritive we know. there is no discounting the sin of the holocaust. the 6 million plus jews who died will always be a blight on the history of mankind. but like everything in life nothing is often as crystal clear as we want to be. and if an old who lived thru hell created an untruth about his love life is he really deserving of what you and others are doing to him?
Signs and symptoms of antisocial personality disorder may include: * Disregard for right and wrong * Persistent deceit * Using charm or wit to manipulate others * Intimidation of others * Lack of remorse about harming others * Impulsive behavior * Irresponsible work behavior Narcissistic personality disorder symptoms may include: * Believing that you're better than others * Fantasizing about power, success and attractiveness * Exaggerating your achievements or talents * Expecting constant praise and admiration * Believing that you're special * Failing to recognize other people's emotions and feelings * Expecting others to go along with your ideas and plans * Taking advantage of others * Expressing disdain for those you feel are inferior * Being jealous of others * Believing that others are jealous of you
http://pitch.pe/2632 update on book. follow link
Fact: Harris Salomon is a liar and a scoundrel. I asked him flat out to help me get a copy of the manuscript. He refused. I asked him after I had asked the literary agent, who referred me to the publishing company, and after I had contacted the publicist, the editor, and the head of the Penguin imprint. No one would provide it. Fact: Harris knows the story is a lie and now hides behind claims about a survivor's memory and his "belief" in his memory. The truth is that Herman and Roma's false story caused huge rifts in their families and led to numerous confrontations with Herman and Roma about "truth." Harris Salomon of all people could have known about all this but he chose not to know. Even in the face of revelations, he chooses not to know. And, sadly, Herman and Roma would not let go of a story that gave them such attention. Anyone wants to check the facts, this is based on accounts stated by his son, his nephews, his sister-in-law, and survivors who were close with him -- in the camps, and since the camps. Harris Salomon now screams censorship! This is a guy who threatened me with legal action for investigating the story and speaking to a reporter; this is a guy who phoned my dean, the provost of Michigan State University, and finally the president of Michigan State University. What a piece of work is he.
The problem, Mr. Salomon, is that Holocaust deniers seek to find whatever holes they can in the 'Holocaust narrative', and then string them together in order to help 'prove' that the Holocaust did not happen - or that it was much smaller than it was. They will point to various "proven lies" to show that the actual narrative of the Holocaust is a fiction. I don't really blame these two very elderly survivors - as you wrote - they've seen more and experienced more than any of us. Who I do blame are enablers like you, who should know better. I guarantee you that this whole episode will be all over the Holocaust deniers websites - as yet more proof that the Jews are making the whole thing up. That, sir, is YOUR legacy. I hope you are proud of yourself.
"I guarantee you that this whole episode will be all over the Holocaust deniers websites - as yet more proof that the Jews are making the whole thing up." No, it won't, because saying the whole thing was made up is a tattered old strawman which survives only in the paranoid imaginations of professional Holo-marketeers. This latest hoax may, however, be cited on revisionist (get it right) websites as a trivial example of how an inflated, poorly documented, forensically deficient set of tales about "industrialized genocide" can be turned into schmaltz and kitsch by people who want status and money. The fact that "survivors", real and bogus, exaggerate or mislead is well attested. Yad Vashem said that more than half the 20,000 accounts it collected were unreliable. People repeat what they have heard and read, embellishing it to make it distinctive. Stalin's Red Army, which liberated the camps, had its own agenda; so have the political Zionists seeking to keep the moral high ground for Israel, even though Israel's founders specifically repudiated the notion that the State was a DP camp for refugees. It gets worse. This year, apart from tall tales for the Oprahfied booboisie, we are in for a flood of Holocaust-themed movies. In contrast with Israel's conduct in Gaza and the fallout from the Madoff and (prospectively) other financial scandals involving Jews, the backlash against incessant Hollywooden kvetching about the Shoah, as if it were the only systematic persecution in history, could be tremendous. It implies that Jewry lives in the past, through the sufferings of the long-dead, to quiet its conscience about its present decadence: berating the descendants of evil or apathetic white Christian folks 60 years ago, so that it can implicitly demand exemption from criticism for the collective and individual sins of today's Jews. It is mostly older and rich Jews who play this "get out of jail free" card nowadays. Younger ones are so sick of this dead weight of history hung round their necks, and so embarrassed by lugubrious shroud-waving, that they are dumping their Jewish identity. Time to get a new act, fellers. www.nkusa.org
Buchenwald... roughly Birch Forest is tucked quite a distance from Weimar, some 4 1/2 miles. This fact alone is enough to fault the story. It not close to the road. In fact there is a winding road through a dense forest one must traverse in order to reach the camp. Its a good story. I guess the author figured it wouldn't sell as a novel.
People already don't know what was truth and what was fiction. The 'holocaust industry' only started many years after the war, and relies on 'eye witness testimony' rather than on contemporary documentation and forensic evidence. The news organisations at the time didn't mention it, nor did the Allied leaders in their memoirs. There is just as much (if not more) evidence that Stalin starved 10 million Ukrainians to death in the holodomor, and 20 million Russians in the great purges (some of which, like the Katyn massacre, were blamed on the Germans) but the survivors of those events don't have multi-million dollar organisations, books, films and websites to tell their stories, nor have they received any compensation from the killers or their descendants.
To Nachman: How right you are. A lunatic fringe, anti-semitic site already quotes Rosenblat to prove that all Jews lie. And these are not the Apple story lies, but Rosenblat's further fantastical descriptions of his experiences in Buchenwald which are totally contrary to verifiable facts. The site in question merely quotes verbatim the lies of this one Jew to "prove" their point. To David Nilsson: I greatly resent and totally reject your comment that "survivors" (why the question marks?) exaggerate or mislead. I speak from personal experience when I say that writing a Holocaust memoir is a painful and emotionally draining experience. Memory -- everyone's memory -- is necessarily fragmentary, as I make clear in my modest memoir , "1000:1 ODDS." But rather than exaggerate I pull my punches when it comes to describing the undescribable. Your ignorant comment insults me, insults the many remembrances that were written in blood, and insults the memory of those who are long gone. Peter Kubicek
To Harris Salomon: Your last post to me is a total mishmash and hardly up to the standard of your customary vitriol. What exactly have Herman and Roma's lies have to do with the fact that the story of Rumanian and Ukranian Jews has not been adequately told? The story of Jews in Slovakia has also been inadequately told and I tried to make up for it by my own contribution. But I do not contribute by inventing falsehoods. The Rosenblat"contribution," as you call it, is a gift to the deniers that will keep on giving. Don't make matters worse by trying to whitewash them and by attacking those of us whose only motive is the truth.
I would be interested to hear the reactions of readers and of Prof. Lipstadt regarding the 1997 film "Life Is Beautiful." It won rave reviews and Oscars, but I thought it romanticized and trivialized the Holocaust in a very dangerous way. In reality, there is no way that an adult could hide the horrors of the Nazi slaughter, or the daily humiliations and degradations that preceded the killing, even from a young and impressionable child. While the story creates a temptingly pleasing fantasy, it is precisely this "feel-good" fantasy that allows modern viewers to convince themselves that the Holocaust was not so bad after all. Obviously, millions of moviegoers and film critics disagreed with me, but I wonder what others think?
To David Nilsson: Until you personally find a brilliant method to turn back the hands of time and become a young Jew yourself, I suggest you not make ignorant blanket statements about "dead weight of history hung round (our) necks, and so embarrassed by lugubrious shroud-waving, that they are dumping their Jewish identity." As a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, and one who is well acquainted with many others of the same generational/historical placement, I am appalled by your statement and have spent the majority of my adolescent and young adult life attempting to bring the harsh truth of my family's experience to light to those of my generation, and further generations, both on an academic and personal level. Mind you, I've found, via anecdote, that I've accomplished this with some measure of success. The truth of the atrocities of the holocaust and it's mere mention is not an albatross, but rather, our legacy, our responsibility to pass on and a catalyst to will ourselves further in familial history, religion and tradition. For you to suggest otherwise in any context, regarding me personally, or any of my generation, is misinformed and plain wrong. The website you offer as proof is clearly a small sub-sect and in no way represents the general consensus of current youthful Jewish thought. Just ask the thousands upon thousands of Jewish youth who have participated in the March of the Living over the past three decades, versus your paltry offering of a disorganized single website.
So, The Angel at the Fence had a fabricated element, and we are lucky to have alert and knowledgable people like Professor Deborah Lipstadt, for so many reasons, to assert the truth. However, the idea of two people meeting in an intense situation in the old country, then reuniting and marrying later in the new country -- this story has a familiar ring to me. I believe my maternal grandparents did in fact meet eachother in the woods in Grodno Gubernia, not during the Holocaust, but earlier in the century, at a clandestine meeting to discuss overthrowing the Czar. My grandmother was from a little shtetl and my grandfather was an itinerant radical from the city of Grodno who had come to speak & rabble rouse. Later they met again, in the U.S. and soon married, and settled in Massachusetts. I believe this story is true, or approximately so. In my family, though, the veracity of a story was secondary to the art of the story -- its drama or its lesson or its humor where appropriate. This inspite of the fact I heard my father shout a thousand times, "Dem Emmes!" -- an ungrammatical idiom for The Truth. Years ago, I researched the background of the family stories I heard, and all that I uncovered was congruent with the basics of the stories. In my own work as a writer I became dedicated to veracity, but that is beyond the scope of this letter. Achy Obejas is a Cuban-American novelist who explores veracity in her fiction; for example, in Memory Mambo, the narrator weighs the veracity of her father's claim to have invented duct tape, while her own relationships challenge her ability as a truth teller. I'm just saying that veracity is a subject that interests me.... There are moments though when I doubt I can judge the truthfulness of a claim.
there are things that are not right in peter's story as well. there is much of his holocaust story that is not exactly as it happened. the proof is in baden baden and a half a dozen other archives.
I just discovered Shapiro's comment of 3/14/09. I presume that by "Peter's Story" he means my memoir, "1000:1 ODDS."
I resent Shapiro's insulting and cowardly comment and find it most offensive. I challenge him to tell us what exactly he found "not right" and "not exactly as it happened" in my published story. I expect his detailed reply here, or else he can e-mail me directly at pkubicek@verizon.net.