Another Memoir Bites the Dust

The publishing world is rocked with the news of yet another falsified memoir--this time a fabricated tale about the Holocaust which fooled almost everyone from agent to editor to would-be publisher to Oprah. Angel at the Fence by Holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat, slated to be published by Berkley Books, a division of Penguin, was discovered to be "embellished" and Penguin has canceled its publication.

Herman Rosenblat's story was almost too good to be true. He said he first met his wife, Roma Radzicki Rosenblat, while he was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. According to Herman, Roma saved his life by throwing apples over the fence.

It was several scholars who discovered the holes in Herman's tale. The lead sleuth is one Kenneth Waltzer, director of Jewish Studies at Michigan State University, who determined that the section of the concentration camp where Herman was kept had fences facing other parts of the camp. The only section with a fence that faced "the outside world" faced the SS barracks. There simply was no way that Roma would have been able to throw apples to Herman in plain sight of the SS. Moreover, according to the New York Times, "the fence was electrified and civilians outside the camp were forbidden to walk along the road that bordered the fence."

When confronted with the holes in his story, Herman confessed that Roma never threw him apples. Indeed, Roma, her parents, and two sisters were hidden as Christians at a farm over 200 miles away from where Herman was imprisoned.

This story has apparently been around for some time and versions of it have appeared in a volume of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series as well as in a children's book, Angel Girl by Laurie Friedman. Herman probably told the tale so many times, he believed it himself.

At this point, Penguin has demanded that Herman return his advance and his agent is investigating her legal options. "I believed the teller," agent Andrea Hurst told the New York Times. "He was in so many magazines and books and on Oprah. It did not seem like it would not be true."

There is good reason that Holocaust scholars are on guard against any fabrication of survivor stories because holes in credibility can lead to an undermining of the existence of the genocide. And we should be grateful that the memoir was not published. But the situation also underlines the further difficulties first time authors are gong to face with regard to credibility.

It is a fine story and one that Rosenbalt could clearly have published as a short story. It is a shame that Rosenbalt, whose intention was only to tell his story, felt compelled to embellish the details.