"...[Harris] Salomon [, the producer of Flower of the Fence, who remains close friends with Herman] told me that I should go see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a new film that, like Herman's tale, tells the story of a young boy at a concentration camp who befriends a German boy on the other side of the fence. I pointed out to Salomon that The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is based on a novel."posted by ericb at 8:41 AM on December 24, 2008
"If anybody writes a memoir, there's no way to know whether these things happened the way the individual wrote. You either believe, or don't believe."No way to verify? How about the people who were in the camp with the author, every day, and said they never heard him mention this girl? That there's no record of her family anywhere near the area? That they could not possibly approach the fence at all, let alone hang out at the fence, or receive produce?
In a statement Saturday evening, Berkley Books, which had earlier defended the book, said it decided to cancel publication “after receiving new information from Herman Rosenblat’s agent, Andrea Hurst.” Craig Burke, director of publicity at Berkley, declined to elaborate. Berkeley said it was demanding that Mr. Rosenblat and Ms. Hurst return all money received so far.posted by orthogonality at 12:22 PM on December 28, 2008
Ms. Hurst said in a statement on Sunday: “It is with heavy heart that I share what I learned today from my client, Herman Rosenblat, about his book, ‘Angel at the Fence.’ Herman revealed to me that part of his memoir was not true. He’d invented the crux of this amazing love story–about the girl at the fence who threw him an apple–which drew my attention when I read it in a major magazine [Guideposts] two years ago. All of the story about Herman in the concentration camps and the love and survival of him and his brothers, he states is true. I understand why Berkley has chosen to withdraw publication of this book. Like millions of others who read this story or saw Herman and Roma on Oprah, I never for a moment questioned the authenticity of the widely circulated story. I know that everyone who has worked so hard with Herman this past year is as stunned and disappointed as I am that this story of hope has such a sad ending.”
Through Ms. Hurst, Mr. Rosenblat also released a statement Sunday: “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.”
He added: “Why did I do that and write the story with the girl and the apple, because I wanted to bring happiness to people, to remind them not to hate, but to love and tolerate all people. I brought good feelings to a lot of people and I brought hope to many. My motivation was to make good in this world.”
“Among the fooled, at least the partially fooled, was Berenbaum, former director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Berenbaum had been asked to read the manuscript by film producer Harris Salomon, who still plans an adaptation of the book.posted by ericb at 1:06 PM on December 28, 2008
Berenbaum's tentative support - ‘Crazier things have happened,’ he told The Associated Press last fall - was cited by the publisher as it initially defended the book. Berenbaum now says he saw factual errors, including Rosenblat's description of Theresienstadt, the camp from which he was eventually liberated, but didn't think of challenging the love story.
‘There's a limit to what I can verify, because I was not there,’ he says. ‘I can verify the general historical narrative, but in my research I rely upon the survivors to present the specifics of their existence with integrity. When they don't, they destroy so much and they ruin so much, and that's terrible.’
‘I was burned,’ he added. ‘And I have to read books more skeptically because I was burned.’”
"A love story set in a concentration camp as a way of teaching about the Holocaust actually inverts the reality of the Holocaust, denies it in its own way," [Michigan State University professor Kenneth] Waltzer wrote [Sherman] in an e-mail. "The reality of being in a concentration camp was that ... [n]ormal impulses like those of young lovers were disrupted, collapsed. The idea that two people in the circumstances described--a prisoner in a camp, in a group of brothers, the primary source of loyalty, and a girl in hiding under false identity with a family group, her primary source of loyalty--would put all up for grabs by meeting daily in the open at a guarded electrified fence means that the writer didn't really understand, and the publishers and moviemaker didn't really understand either. And this is why all this is so important. There is denial of the Holocaust, this isn't that, but there is also denial of the substance or reality of the Holocaust--and this is definitely that."I suppose I prefer my Holocaust denial to be comparatively straightforward, e.g. Mr. Death.
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posted by odinsdream at 7:47 AM on December 24, 2008