Angry about Angel at the Fence fakery
Recent news that another memoir -- Angel at the Fence by Herman Rosenblat -- was at least partially fabricated left me both angry and sad. (In Angel, Rosenblat claimed he met his wife, Roma, at a concentration camp; after questions were raised by The New Republic, he admitted they met after the war, and the book's planned publication was halted.)
I was angry because such trickery violated the unwritten contract between author and reader. A memoir carries a premium because readers often form an emotional bond with the author. That reaction goes much deeper than appreciating a writing style or plot twist. If a memoir veers from the truth, the author is stealing those emotions.
And angry because publishers should be more careful in vetting books. Last year, Margaret Seltzer’s "memoir" of gang life, Love and Consequences, and Misha Defonseca’s Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, were exposed as fakes. And who can forget the spectacular crash of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces?
And angry because such trickery gives ammunition to crackpot Holocaust deniers.
But I was also saddened that Rosenblat — a true Holocaust victim and concentration camp survivor — will now be remembered for all the wrong reasons. Not for the quiet heroism of facing overwhelming evil. Not for having the strength to build a new life. after the war. Not for a long life and long marriage.
Photo by J. Pat Carter/AP
Here’s what some Read Street readers have said:
Over the past months, I have received this story — always the same — in an email countless times. It’s well-written. Quite a tear-jerker. I never believe any of these email stories, but a lot of people have believed this one, since there is always some sort of note assuring the recipients of the truth of the event. — Eve
Mr. Rosenblat’s lies have made it harder for scholars and survivors of the holocaust to be believed when they speak in public. — David
Misrepresentation is still wrong, just as it is in Mr. Rosenblat’s case. I still believe that he is, as well as all holocaust survivors, a national treasure to be cherished. ... He paid for sins that he never committed and he did his time at Buchenwald. Let the poor man alone. — Esso
Retitle it as a fiction based on fact then go forward. How many books have we read and loved that just weren’t exposed. A well written book is a book worth reading. Let’s look to Wall Street for the BIG falsehoods. — Georgia
While she always preferred The Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew, 
Comments
In fairness to Holocaust "memoirist" Herman Rosenblat, his is but a tiny white lie compared to some of the other kinds of troubling lies that have gone down in the context of Holocaust remembrance. A case in point:
When the South African Prime Minister John Vorster made a state visit to Israel in April 1976 it began with a tour of Yad Vashem, where the late Yitzhak Rabin invited the onetime Nazi collaborator, unabashed racist, and implacable white supremacist to pay homage to Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
Compared, say, to oft-heard outcries from Jewish groups over even the mildest whiff of Holocaust revisionism, no less remarkable was the bland equanimity both Israeli and Diasporan Jews displayed toward the Vorster visit.
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi recalls that [The Israeli Connection, Random House: Toronto, 1987, p.x] "For most Israelis, the Vorster visit was just another state visit by a foreign leader. It did not draw much attention. Most Israelis did not even remember his name, and did not see anything unusual, much less surreal in the scene [an old Nazi diehard invited to mourn the victims at a Holocaust memorial]: Vorster was just another visiting dignitary being treated to the usual routine."
As a onetime Nazi collaborator, Vorster should, of course, have been arrested and tried once he set foot on Israeli soil - instead he was warmly welcomed by his Jewish hosts.
Vorster left Israel four days later, but not before signing several treaties between the Jewish state and Pretoria's apartheid regime. A denouement Leslie and Andrew Cockburn describe
in Dangerous Liaison [Stoddart Publishing: Toronto, 1991, pp. 299-300]: "The old Nazi sympathizer came away with bilateral agreements for commercial, military, and nuclear cooperation that would become the basis for future relations between the two countries."
Posted by: Orest Slepokura | January 4, 2009 11:42 AM
Dave
someone else was behind them....manipulating them.....ask me who? i know
danny bloom
Tufts 1971
internt gumshoe who took down this book from my lair in Taiwan
So Herman and Roma ***decided, in evening of their lives, to repackage
their survival as a love story of the death camps, "the single
greatest love story... we've ever told on the air" Oprah Winfrey.
http://www.jossip.com/the-guy-who-wants-credit-for-breaking-the-latest-oprah-memoir-scandal-20090102/
Posted by: danny bloom | January 4, 2009 9:38 PM
Dave
I am moving on...but in a new way....I have started a grass roots campaign on Net http://ijcm101.blogspot.com
to ask Oprah tp invite Herman on her show one last
time for a hug fest, crying fest, apologyu fest, show remose fest, and then ask forgiveness from fans and public, both of them, endikng in a final hug of forgiveness but also a recogniztion that they both erred...big time
Posted by: danny bloom | January 4, 2009 10:59 PM