Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Appples Over the Fence [9]: A Survivor Speaks Out

One of the first people to contact me about the Rosenblat memoir and to emphatically state that this story was false was Sidney Finkel of Tuscon. An interview with him in the local paper can be found here.

3 comments:

Sergent7 said...

If you want to read a beautiful love story that started during the Holocaust, read "To See You Again: A True Story of Love in a Time of War" written by Betty Schimmel. It is one of the best books I have ever read... and it's true!

Malcolm R. Campbell said...

As the news came out, I was rather surprised by he fact that Rosenblat's friends and family new for years the story was a fabrication, but preferred not to embarrass Rosenblat rather than coming forward before so many others were hurt by this.

Malcolm

AncestralManor said...

Malcolm,

The current sensationalism of the Rosenblat exposure is a mirror image of the promotion of the Rosenblat myth.

It is worth noting that the Herman Rosenblat ignored direct and appropriate private confrontations from family and friends. It is a lot to expect them to also go up against the media gatekeepers.

Exposing the truth in any fraud produces questions about motivation including jealousy, mean spiritedness, and in the cases of non-Jews posing as Holocaust survivors anti-semitic leanings, etc.

Gabe Sherman at The New Republic admitted in a "Talk of the Nation" interview on NPR that when he started he thought he was doing routine fact checking. He must have soon realized in his interviews that the objective evidence was not only solid but that the personal testimonies converged dramatically.

Well intentioned people thought that judgments should not be made without reading Herman's book.

Gawker has now published just a few pages of it -
http://gawker.com/5121269/exclusive-excerpts-of-the-fake-holocaust-memoir?skyline=true&s=i

There are at least 4 assertions in those few pages that are not supported by public records, have nothing to do with the "apple over the fence," but do support other comments by family and friends.

It is a sad situation.

Sharon Sergeant