We've just published a new article updating Gabriel Sherman's original reporting on the Holocaust memoir Angel at the Fence. Publisher Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Group, continues to defend the memoir, but auther Herman Rosenblat's sister-in-law and a fellow Holocaust survivor, both speaking publicly
for the first time, say that Herman's story is fabricated. Sidney Finkel, a 77-year-old Holocaust survivor who was liberated with
Herman, tells TNR that he ate with Herman and Roma Rosenblat the night before the couple was to
appear on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" for the first time, in February
1996. At the Omni Hotel in downtown Chicago, Roma told Finkel that she
was not hiding in Schlieben as Herman tells in his story, and was in
fact hiding in another part of Poland. “It’s made up,” Finkel tells
Sherman in an exclusive interview.
Three other survivors,
including the famous British Jewish leader Ben Helfgott, all tell The New Republic that Herman's story is fabricated. "I speak up with great
sorrow,” Helfgott tells TNR. “I don’t like it. He is my friend, and he
will always be my friend. He got intoxicated with it. And so he wants
to carry on.”
For the full story, including comments from the Rosenblats' two children and insight into the scant to nonexistent fact-checking process of Rosenblat's publisher, click here.