Herman Rosenblat, Penned Fake Shoah Memoir, Dies at 85
Herman Rosenblat, a Holocaust survivor who created a scandal by writing a memoir filled with untrue details, has died.
Rosenblat died on Feb. 5 and was buried three days later in Hollywood, Fla., The Associated Press reported. He was 85.
He created an uproar with his 2008 memoir “Angel at the Fence” with the claim that he and his wife, Roma, had first met when she sneaked food to him at a Buchenwald subcamp and reconnected more than a decade later on a blind date in the United States.
Research by scholars and interviews with family members subsequently proved the story to be false, and publisher Berkley Books canceled the memoir.
Rosenblat had indeed survived a harrowing series of experiences in the concentration camps, and his wife, born Roma Radzicki, had indeed survived the war living under a false identity.
However, she had been living far away in Germany with her family. They had never met until the blind date in 1957. They were married a year later.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
