Disputed Oprah-Endorsed Holocaust Memoir Contradicted By More Witnesses

We've just published a new article updating Gabriel Sherman's original reporting on the Holocaust memoir Angel at the Fence. Publisher Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Group, continues to defend the memoir, but auther Herman Rosenblat's sister-in-law and a fellow Holocaust survivor, both speaking publicly for the first time, say that Herman's story is fabricated. Sidney Finkel, a 77-year-old Holocaust survivor who was liberated with Herman, tells TNR that he ate with Herman and Roma Rosenblat the night before the couple was to appear on the"Oprah Winfrey Show" for the first time, in February 1996. At the Omni Hotel in downtown Chicago, Roma told Finkel that she was not hiding in Schlieben as Herman tells in his story, and was in fact hiding in another part of Poland. “It’s made up,” Finkel tells Sherman in an exclusive interview.

Three other survivors, including the famous British Jewish leader Ben Helfgott, all tell The New Republic that Herman's story is fabricated."I speak up with great sorrow,” Helfgott tells TNR. “I don’t like it. He is my friend, and he will always be my friend. He got intoxicated with it. And so he wants to carry on.”

For the full story, including comments from the Rosenblats' two children and insight into the scant to nonexistent fact-checking process of Rosenblat's publisher, click here.

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