Discredited Memoirist Defends Holocaust Book

Compiled by DAVE ITZKOFF for The New York Times, February 18, 2009

Herman Rosenblat, whose memoir, “Angel at the Fence,” was canceled after he admitted falsifying parts of his story, said in interviews that he invented his tale to give people hope and promote understanding about the Holocaust.

In his book Mr. Rosenblat wrote that when he was in a German concentration camp during World War II he met his wife, Roma, when she threw him apples from outside the camp’s fence. Holocaust scholars disputed these details, and Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Books, halted the work’s publication. In an interview Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Mr. Rosenblat said: “It wasn’t a lie. It was my imagination. And in my imagination, in my mind, I believed it. Even now I believe it, that she was there and she threw the apple to me.”

A movie of his story and a novel adapted from its screenplay are still planned.