Herman Rosenblat, Penned Fake Shoah Memoir, Dies at 85

By JTA February 20, 2015

Herman Rosenblat, a Holocaust survivor who created a scandal by writing a memoir filled with untrue details, has died.

Rosenblat died on Feb. 5 and was buried three days later in Hollywood, Fla., The Associated Press reported. He was 85.

He created an uproar with his 2008 memoir “Angel at the Fence” with the claim that he and his wife, Roma, had first met when she sneaked food to him at a Buchenwald subcamp and reconnected more than a decade later on a blind date in the United States.

Research by scholars and interviews with family members subsequently proved the story to be false, and publisher Berkley Books canceled the memoir.

Rosenblat had indeed survived a harrowing series of experiences in the concentration camps, and his wife, born Roma Radzicki, had indeed survived the war living under a false identity.

However, she had been living far away in Germany with her family. They had never met until the blind date in 1957. They were married a year later.

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