"Angel Girl," Children's Book Based On Holocaust Memoir, Also Pulled

NEW YORK — The fallout continues from Herman Rosenblat's discredited Holocaust story.

Laurie Friedman's "Angel Girl," a children's book inspired by Rosenblat, was pulled Tuesday by the Lerner Publishing Group. President and publisher Adam Lerner said in a statement that the Minneapolis-based company had been misled by Rosenblat and his wife, Roma.

"We are dismayed to learn about Herman and Roma Rosenblat's recantation of part of their Holocaust survival story," Lerner said. "While this tragic event in world history needs to be taught to children, it is imperative that it is done so in a factual way that doesn't sacrifice veracity for emotional impact."

Friedman, whose other books include the popular "Mallory" series, said in a statement issued through Lerner that the Rosenblats had reviewed her manuscript and assured her of its accuracy.

"I wanted to find a way to share what I felt was an important and inspiring message for children," Friedman said. "My goal in writing `Angel Girl' was to communicate that even in the darkest of times, no one should give up hope.

"Unfortunately, I, like many others, am disappointed and upset to now learn of Herman's fabrications."

Lerner Publishing is offering refunds for returned copies of the book, which had a list price of $16.95. About 2,000 copies had been sold, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of industry sales.

Rosenblat, 79, and a resident of North Miami Beach, Fla., last weekend acknowledged fabricating his story of how he met his wife, to whom he has been married for 50 years. His own memoir, "Angel at the Fence," scheduled for release in February, was quickly canceled by Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA).

Rosenblat, a prisoner at a sub-camp of Buchenwald in the 1940s, had charmed the world for years with his story of meeting a young girl who would throw him apples and bread from the other side of a barbed-wire fence. Rosenblat appeared twice on Oprah Winfrey's television talk show, and was a popular speaker and interview subject.

But scholars doubted Rosenblat, noting that the alleged meeting area at the camp was next to the SS barracks. Numerous inconsistencies were raised recently by The New Republic.

"To all who supported and believed in me and this story, I am sorry for all I have caused to you and every one else in the world," Rosenblat said in a statement released Sunday through his agent, Andrea Hurst.

At least one Rosenblat project is still on: A feature film based on his life that is to begin filming next year. Producer Harris Salomon of Atlantic Overseas Pictures says the movie may refer to why the Rosenblats apparently "fabricated elements of their wartime love story."

On Tuesday, Salomon said he also hopes to find a publisher for a novelization of the film's screenplay. Atlantic "will ensure the publication of the book whether or not a publisher steps forward," he said.

Winfrey's office, meanwhile, has yet to comment, although the Rosenblats remain on her Web site, , where their relationship is labeled "the single greatest love story, in 22 years of doing this show, we've ever told on the air." http://www.oprah.com

Comments

[yorkville7]

the red cross records show only 237,000 j/ews died total in all camps mostly of typhus why not write a book on the facts not legend

[in4success]

okay -- seems to me now the story is better as it does involve human tragedy -- a man lies for the common good (in his heart / mind) - there is nobility in that. so why not classify this as "fiction," publish and move on allowing historians to clarify?

jesus!

[Donatella]

Because he was motivated by greed. His own family knew about the lies and said that he did it for the money. No honor here, only trying to make money from a horrible historical event.

[FaceYourFears]

Does Oprah know any AA authors.....just curious.

[harriettubman]

She loves Toni Morrison and has purchased the rights to Terri McMillan's next book.

[ROBOT8]

it'a about time! lies lies lies

[raker]

Oprah may be easier to dupe than others because of her professed believe in magic, in angels and their supernatural powers to manage peoples' love lives.

[tomas0808]

Penguin man, they never learn. One of the reasons they claimed for not buying my heroin memoir this summer (which includes documentation to back up my claims, police reports, medical records) was because they got burned with Frey's memoir. And now they get burned again. Memoirs are inherently unreliable and the temptation to spin the story is insidious. They ALL need to include documentation if they are to be considered on fiction from this point on.

[the-lexicon]

Sadly, though...I bet your memoir didn't get picked up because heroin is so "yesterday". It's not the drug-du-jour.

It's all about timing.

lexicon

[humanist1]

humanist1

[FaceYourFears]

I agree....I'm a big supporter of PO but I've yet to read his first book. It's probably an excellent read, I just tend to question accounts made in memoirs.

[zzannahk]

Anyone looking for a moving children's book - check out Rose Blanche.

[MarvBitesBack]

How many hundreds of millions per year is the US Govt still spending pursuing Holocaust crimes? I do believe it's time to move on (or at least eliminate the funding).

[iblisexpat]

For as long as there is MONEY!

[cseper]

Hasn't there been enough Holocaust stories? I'm sick and tired of hearing about the 'Holocaust'!

[ADVOCATE4ZPG]

....BUT, it's a principal device to buttress UNQUESTIONED support for the state of Israel and serves to CROWD OUT any discussion of the greater holocaust which occurred between 1929 and 1932 in the Ukraine and parts of Russia: SOME 14 million+ PEOPLE were starved or executed by STALIN and his agents, some of whom were JEWS!

Read Robert Conquest's seminal book: HARVEST of SORROW et al. before perfunctory demands for citations. Just Conquest's citations alone will require half a year to verify by some trianulated reference......

As long as there are actual and alleged survivors of the Jewish Holocaust alive, the fountain of stories will continue to sputter and splatter on the drier pages of history.............

[iblisexpat]

No, it won't stop then either. There will be the grandchildren and great grandchildren and great great grandchildren, uncles, cousins, nephews, you name it. Money and greed at its best.

[mulegino]

The sad thing about history and historical memory is that most people refuse to learn any lessons from it.
The Nazi regime committed atrocities against Jews, Poles, Serbs, Gypsies, etc. The quarrel that I (and many others) have is not with the victims of these atrocities, or the survivors, but the way that history has been distorted to make this a " unique event", as if the Native Americans, Irish, Armenians, Africans, Chinese, Ukrainians, Tasmanians, Palestinians, Cambodians, et al. did not suffer equally (in many cases) hideous treatment at the hands of their own oppressors.
Naturally there are people who will take monetary advantage of their real or imagined participation in this "unique" event, and join the ranks of celebrity victimhood. The victims of the other, anonymous atrocities, remain historical footnotes.

[T Pol]

The uniqueness is in the incredible organization, implementation of technology, construction of special facilities, detailed recordkeeping, etc. The incredible forethought and planning that went into the incredible act of hatred.

I, for one, am not less sensitive to other atrocities because of the Holocaust. If anything, I am more sensitive to them because of the Holocaust.

Jews have been and will continue to be among the greatest supporters of civil and human rights initiatives (R.I.P. Helen Suzman, the lone voice in South Africa against apartheid at one point).

I hope this thread will not become yet another round of latent anti-Semiticism, as I am sadly seeing in so many comment threads on HuffPo. For a "liberal" and "progressive" blog, there is an undercurrent of contempt for Jews I have not seen in a long, long time.

It is, frankly, frightening.

[the-lexicon]

What you are seeing in the comments of HuffingtonPost, are comments by the nutbar trolls.

Anti-semiticsm is not a progressive/left ideology.

And while anti-semiticsm is certainly alive and well and on display now and again, I think that the tag is over-used, mis-applied, and cravenly applied, all too often.

It is certainly possible that one can decry the current activity of the Israeli government, without being anti-semitic. Admonishing a child who is behaving inappropriately is not being "anti-child".

the fact that the semites wrap their bloodlines and their religion, their law and their sovereignty into one big bundle, makes it difficult to parse and reason certain things.

I, for one, find the "all in, eye for an eye, ten-fold retaliation" thing to be pretty damn ugly, and I don't think that makes me an anti-semite. Contempt for hard-core right-wing hawks is really a rather different thing than contempt for jews. I happen to feel the same way about East Timor, about Pinochet, about Allende, about Baby Doc, about Mugabe, about Idi Amin, a list too long for huffpost's post size limit!

lexicon.

let the flames begin. God help me.

[yorkville7]

ask not if it is ant-isemitic ask if its true

[iblisexpat]

Poor old Ahmadinejad asked for unbiased, scholarly research into this matter and the politicians, zionist americans and others screamed anti-semitism. Who dares question this builtup, exclusive atrocity by the Nazis?
The holocause as we read about today began only 10 years AFTER the end of the war. don't we deserve to know the truth?

[MsAttitude]

Under close scrutiny by many journalists the book "Dreams of My Father" has been proven to be full of false information. The book is really a psychological self examination by the author. Should that book be pulled?

[pamelagoodenough]

Link, please.
Provide a reference to your accusation. I question its veracity.

[MsAttitude]

Pick up the book "The Obama Nation". Read "Dreams from my Father" and this book too.

[harriettubman]

He wrote this when he was a nobody in college. What purpose would it serve to embellish a story about an unknown person?

[yorkville7]

its just an attempt to defend all the books on THIS subject that have been exposed and change the convo

[Brainspore]

Do you have any references to back up that statement that have not been described as "a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods" by FactCheck.org?

[Greytdog]

Oprah should stick to celebrities and stay out of the "best biography in the world" picking series. She may be the queen of all she surveys, but her ability to pick biographical literature is in serious doubt.

[harriettubman]

Her producers do the leg work. If the publisher was fooled no wonder her producers were fooled too.

[Leigha2z]

Yorkville7, I live in Berlin Germany, come here and I'll show you all the proof you need, sick a and retched as it is. You should be ashamed of yourself.

[yorkville7]

and by germany you mean izrael right.....go sell propaganda somewhere else

[the-lexicon]

I am disgusted at all the hoopla over this. It's ridiculous.

On a regular basis, I see REAMS of so-called "historical texts" aimed at children, in which "dramatizations" are used to illustrate the "history".

Just take ONE example....ONE:

Pocahontas.

Children and many adults, believe her to be something she utterly was NOT. Entire conversations SUCH AS MIGHT HAVE OCCURRED between her and her contemporaries are made up out of thin air.

But, everyone seems to be perfectly "ok" with that!

How is that any different? Those are lies, as bad as any lies that anyone ever put in a book. To a particular purpose, which is to forward a particular agenda and "truth".

lexicon

[subdued]

The truth be damned, Mr. Lexicon.

subdued (Hey, this is neat - now my words have so much more meaning!)

[mulegino]

And the Disney cartoon, which many take as fact, was a 180 degree distortion of history:

The real Pocahontas did not marry John Smith, she married John Rolfe; neither of these men converted to animism-it was Pocahontas who converted to Christianity, and went to live in England, forsaking, apparently, her talking animal companions for the miseries of European civilization.

Orwell's "Ministry of Truth" has nothing on Hollywood with regards to mendacity.

[the-lexicon]

Just to be clear, I'm not even talking about the disney animated story...I'm talking about HISTORY books. Don't get me started on Disney!!!!!!

And that's just a single example.

My point is this: Why the outrage over this rather inconsequential book and it's rather inconsequential author? You can open ANY EXISTING "SERIOUS" HISTORY BOOK and find far more egregious examples of outright fabrications.

The so-called "historical record" is so utterly polluted as it is, that this one hardly rises to the point of relevance.

I mean, what's next? Are they gonna tell us that Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer was really a GIRL?

lexicon

[harriettubman]

So true. I picked up a book that caught my eye, "Lies My Teacher Told Me' by James Loewen. Once you read about the TRUE history behind the lies taught in American History text books, you'll be floored!!! This was a 2 yr research project done by a sociologist and his colleagues.

Mr. Loewen offers proof of what happened or disproves what they said happened. History was just whitewashed. One tidbit was that President Woodrow Wilson was a KKK member and ordered federal employees segregated. His primary campaign promise was to do more for civil rights, which was an outright lie!! There's more about the lies told about Christopher Columbus--no hero, slavery, Native Americans and much more. Many people who were never credited for anything are listed in this book.

[iblisexpat]

Better yet, for those of you who may want to know the truth about American history, read Distinguished Professor Howard Zinn's book " The History of the American People".

[yorkville7]

lol are you mr rosemblatt

[subdued]

Truth, lies, memories, false memories - Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

[Brainspore]

Sure, just don't sell me a daisy and tell me it's a rose.