Holocaust is actually defined as the extensive loss of life especially through fire. Since World War II, the Holocaust has been associated with the genocide of Jews by the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler. About 6 million Jews died in The Holocaust. Stories abound, many movies and books were written about the Holocaust.
The most recent story, Angel At The Fence, a memoir by Herman Rosenblat. It tells of how young Rosenblat at 12, was taken with his family from Poland to a Nazi concentration camp in Buchenwald. In his 3rd year in the concentration camp he met his wife, Roma Radzicky, who sneaked apples to him for 7 months from the other side of be barbed wire fence. Subsequently, Rosenblat was shipped to Czechoslovakia and subsequently liberated by Germans. As fate will have it, Rosenblat met Radzicky years later at a blind date in New York and then marrying her thereafter and they have been married for 50 years. Such a touching love story that had believers including Rosenblat's agent, his publisher, Oprah Winfrey, film producers, journalists, family members, school children and strangers online who ignored, or didn't know about, the warnings from scholars and skeptics that his story didn't make sense.
It was all a hoax. Gabriel Sherman of The New Republic, exposed Rosenblat's hoax after he found inconsistencies through his interviews with top scholars as well as with Rosenblat's sister in law and other Holocaust survivors. Faced with the relevation, Rosenblat confessed he fabricated the love story and his intent was to "bring happiness to people". Plans to launch the memoir in February 2009 has been shelved.
Rosenblat's fabrication would again find cause with non believers of the Holocaust.
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This hoax is a tragedy. The Rosenblats have hurt Jews all over and given support to those who deny the holocaust. I don't understand why Atlantic Pictures is still proceeding to make a film based on a lie. I also don't understand how Oprah could have publicized this story, especially after James Frey and given that many bloggers like Deborah Lipstadt said in 2007 that the Rosenblat's story couldn't be true.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many other worthwhile projects based on genuine love stories from the Holocaust. My favorite is the one about Dina Gottliebova Babbitt - the beautiful young art student who painted Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on the children's barracks at Auschwitz. This painting became the reason Dina and her Mother survived Auschwitz. After the end of the war, Dina applied for an art job in Paris. Unbeknownst to Dina, her interviewer was the lead animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. They fell in love and got married. Now that's a romantic love story! I also admire Dina for her tremendous courage to paint the mural in the first place. Painting the mural for the children caused her to be taken to Dr. Mengele, the Angel of Death. She thought she was going to be gassed, but bravely she stood up to Mengele and he made her his portrait painter, saving herself and her mother from the gas chamber.
Also, Dina's story has been verified as true. Some of the paintings she did for Mengele in Auschwitz survived the war and are at the Auschwitz Birkenau Museum. The story of her painting the mural of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on the children's barrack has been corroborated by many other Auschwitz prisoners, and of course her love and marriage to the animator of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the Disney movie after the war in Paris is also documented.
Why wasn't the Rosenblatt's story checked out before it was published and picked up to have the movie made?? I would like to see true and wonderful stories like Dina's be publicized, not these hoax tales that destroy credibility and trust.