Touching Holocaust love story a hoax

I tend not to trust memoirs as historical documents because memory is notoriously unreliable. How much of anything is real and how much of it is what we've been told over and over again.. The sad thing is that stuff like this just plays in the hands of the deniers.



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/29/earlyshow/main4689314.shtml

The publication of a holocaust memoir called "Angel at the Fence" has been canceled. It was written by Herman Rosenblat, a holocaust survivor, but his story was too good to be true.

snip

The story inspired a children's book, two appearances on the Oprah Winfrey show, a movie deal and memoir in the works and countless interviews.

Some historians believed him too, but one recently raised red flags. The timeline, he said, didn't work, and the fence was too high. On Saturday, Berkley Books canceled Rosenblat's memoir "Angel at the Fence." In a statement he admitted his version of history was fiction.

that memoirs were history? I don't think I've ever seen a memoir that was historically accurate. That James Frey idiocy earlier has ruined the memoir as a written text.

A subjective retelling of events perhaps, but outright fiction? Um, no. The man is a total fraud, and an attention whore to boot.

my sister sent it to me. its sad, because he said he wanted to bring people hope..but he just deflated a lot of people. it was supposed to be made into a movie..too bad he did this, it was almost a good story. why did he need to embellish? it was already a good story. why didnt more people vet the story before it made it to oprah?

is much more touching than this. I read it in my local newspaper.

A young Jewish woman was fleeing a camp at the end of the war after her captors had abandoned it. Along the road she and her co-horts met a group of American soldiers. One of them stepped forward, spoke to her politely (in German) and addressed her as Fraulein. She burst into tears; it had been so long since anyone called her Fraulein, she said.

The young American soldier was a Jewish man from the Midwest; he'd learned German at home. He and his compatriots helped her and the other refugees to safety. They kept in touch and, later on, married.