7.6 /10 1 Votes
Language English Pages 304 pp (first edition) Originally published 1 February 2009 Publisher Berkley Books | 3.8/5 Goodreads Media type Print (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-425-22581-3 Country United States of America | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Subject Holocaust memoir, love story Publication date To be determined (originally February 3, 2009) Similar Misha: A Mémoire of the Holoc, Fragments: Memories of a Warti, Five Chimneys, A Million Little Pieces, The Man who Broke into Ausc | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived, written by Herman Rosenblat, was a fictitious Holocaust memoir purporting to tell the true story of the author's reunion with, and marriage to a girl, who had passed him food through the barbed-wire fence when he was imprisoned at the Schlieben subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in World War II. The book was scheduled for publication by Berkley Books in February 2009; its publication was canceled on December 27, 2008 when it was discovered that the book's central events were untrue.
Contents
Prior to being exposed as a fabrication, the film rights to the book were purchased for $25 million by Harris Salomon of Atlantic Overseas Pictures. Other fans of the story include Oprah Winfrey who described it as the single greatest love story she had heard in 22 years of doing her show. In June 2010, Atlantic Overseas Pictures and producer Harris Salomon signed a co-production agreement with Castel Film Studios, the largest film studio in Central and Eastern Europe and the studio for Cold Mountain and Borat, to produce a feature film on the Herman Rosenblat affair, based on an original screenplay by Ivo Marloh, to be shot in 2011.
The story
Fabricated by Rosenblat, the story states that, beginning in the Winter of 1944, a nine-year-old Jewish girl posing as a Christian from a local farm, met him at the electrified perimeter fence of the Schlieben concentration camp and tossed him an apple over the fence. She continued passing him food for seven months until he was transferred to another camp. According to Rosenblat, they met in 1957 on a blind date at Coney Island, New York, and, while relating their personal histories, discovered their shared past. Shortly afterwards, they married.
Authenticity questioned
Several Holocaust scholars including Deborah Lipstadt raised questions about “the central premise of his narrative — that a girl met him at the fence and that very girl became his wife,” and suggested that that premise "is, at the very least, an embellishment, and at worst, a wholesale fabrication." According to an article published in the New Republic, Professor Kenneth Waltzer, director of the Jewish Studies program at Michigan State University, stated that maps of Schlieben indicate that neither prisoners nor civilians could have approached the perimeter fence as one could only obtain access immediately next to the SS barracks. Waltzer also determined that Mr. Rosenblat's wife and her family were hidden as Christians at a farm near Breslau, 210 miles away from Schlieben. A number of researchers, including forensic genealogists Sharon Sergeant and Colleen Fitzpatrick, as well as several Holocaust survivors, worked with Waltzer in uncovering the deception and bringing it to the attention of reporters. Friends and family members also raised questions about the truth of statements in the book.
Rosenblat and the publisher, however, initially maintained that the story was truthful. Berkley Books subsequently stated that it was "canceling publication of Angel at the Fence after receiving new information from Herman Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst," and "will demand that the author and the agent return all money that they have received for this work." Rosenblat, who was in fact imprisoned in Schlieben, has acknowledged that the story of meeting his wife there was invented.
Related works
A children's version of the story, entitled Angel Girl (ISBN 978-0822587392), written by Laurie Friedman and illustrated by Ofra Amit, was published in September 2008 by Carolrhoda Books of Lerner Publishing Group.
A $25 million film adaptation of the book, titled Flower of the Fence, is set for production; in spite of the cancellation of the story's publication, the film's producer, Harris Salomon of Atlantic Overseas Pictures, has said the film is a "loose and fictionalised adaptation" whose production is unaffected by issues with the memoir's authenticity. Mr. Salomon stated on the film's website that "American publishing still suffers from the worst kind of censorship" and that "Herman Rosenblat's story of survival, and its message of love and hope will not be silenced."
An independent publisher, York House Press, in White Plains, New York, announced in January 2009 that it will publish a novel adapted from the movie script. In August 2009, York House Press published a paperback by Penelope Holt titled The Apple: Based on the Herman Rosenblat Holocaust Love Story.