More Holocaust Bollock

[Ognir]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081226/ap_ ... ust_memoir

Author, publisher defend disputed Holocaust memoir
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer Hillel Italie, Ap National Writer 51 mins ago

NEW YORK – The author and publisher of a disputed Holocaust memoir defended the book's story of love between two survivors, but also called it a work of memory and not of scholarship.

"This is my personal story as I remember it," Herman Rosenblat said in a statement issued Thursday through Berkley Books, which will release his "Angel at the Fence" in February.

Berkley added its own comments, noting that a leading Holocaust expert, Michael Berenbaum, had found the story credible, but also saying that "any memoir based on the memories of a survivor is verifiable only by him or her alone."

Rosenblat's book is based on his well-publicized story — embraced by Oprah Winfrey among others — of how he met his future wife, Roma Radzicki, on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence at a Nazi concentration camp. Scholars have questioned whether such an encounter could have happened.

"The events that are its background are part of history; the book, however, reflects my memories of how the events affected my life. I was a young child at the time my family was caught up in the Holocaust, and I saw things through a young child's eyes. But I know and remember what I saw," Rosenblat said in his statement.

"What I offer in this memoir are the images, sounds, smells and feelings that have stayed in my mind for some seven decades."

As the Rosenblats have recounted on numerous occasions over the past decade, he was a teenager in a concentration camp in Nazi-controlled Germany and she was slightly younger, her family pretending to be Christian and living nearby.

They met at the camp's fence, where for months she would sneak him apples and bread. Rosenblat was eventually transferred to another camp and lost track of his friend until years after the war, when both were living in New York and met on a blind date. Upon talking about their lives, they recognized each other and were soon married, in 1958.

The couple live in the Miami area in Florida.

Since going public with their story in the 1990s, the Rosenblats have been celebrated by Winfrey among others and have been the subject of a children's book, Laurie Friedman's "Angel Girl." A feature film is scheduled to begin production next year.

But scholars, some of whom were quoted in a recent story by The New Republic, have been highly skeptical, saying the layout of the camp — Schlieben, a sub-camp of Buchenwald — made it virtually impossible that Rosenblat could have approached the fence without being spotted.

"Some serious historians as well as other historical sleuths have done some pretty serious research on this story," Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, wrote on her blog on Dec. 15.

"There are also survivors who are very upset about this story. They just don't believe it."

___

Berkley is an imprint of Penguin Group (USA).

[sullivan]

I can't add any comment to this that isn't already covered in the title of Ognir's post - "More Holocaust Bollock". That just about sums it up, doesn't it?

[Ognir]

Holocaust 'love story' was fake

A US publisher has cancelled publication of a Holocaust memoir after its author revealed that he had made up crucial parts of it.

Herman Rosenblat did survive a German concentration camp, but he did not fall in love with a girl who threw him food over the fence, as stated in the book.

Instead, he met her on a blind date in New York and married her 50 years ago.

His book, Angel at the Fence, came under public scrutiny after a number of scholars questioned important details.

The fabricated story says that when Rosenblat moved to New York after the war he met Roma Radzicki by chance and discovered she was the girl who had thrown apples and bread to him.

They fell in love and married.

But some questioned Rosenblat's descriptions of Schlieben - a sub-camp of Buchenwald - and said it was impossible to throw food over the fence there.

'I wanted to bring happiness'

The book was due to be published by Berkley Books, part of the Penguin Group, in February.

Advance publicity had included a couple of appearances by Rosenblat on the chat show hosted by Oprah Winfrey.

In a statement, Rosenblat, 79, said: "I wanted to bring happiness to people.

"I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world."

His agent Andrea Hurst told the Associated Press: "I question why I never questioned it. I believed it; it was an incredible, hope-filled story."

A statement from Berkley said Rosenblat and his agent will be required to return "all money that they have received for this work," Reuters news agency reported.

Historical records prove that Rosenblat was an inmate at Buchenwald and other camps.

But Rosenblat's agent said the love story involving meeting his future wife through the fence when he was a teenage prisoner at Schlieben was invented.

Brought to book

The Angel at the Fence is the latest in a series of high-profile literary fabrications.

Earlier this year, a Belgian woman revealed she had invented her tale of survival as a Jewish girl searching for her parents with a pack of wolves in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Monique De Wael, who adopted the pseudonym Misha Defonseca, admitted she was not Jewish and had lived in Belgium.

And a memoir by a white woman that claimed she was raised in poverty by a black foster mother and sold drugs for a Los Angeles gang was also exposed as a lie after her sister contacted the publisher.

Margaret B Jones, the author of Love and Consequences, actually grew up in a well-off area of California's San Fernando Valley.

Meanwhile James Frey, another author championed by Oprah Winfrey, admitted he "embellished" his bestselling memoir about his battle with drug addiction published in 2003.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/a ... 802608.stm

Published: 2008/12/29 09:37:56 GMT

[sullivan]

Holocaust 'love story' was fake

They just can't stop themselves, can they?