I am sure that by now the story has circulated to your attention of another case of untrue "true stories", this time in the form of "Angel at the Fence" a Holocaust memoir that would have been released in February had it not been revealed that it was essentially a lie. For decades, Herman and Roma Rosenblat have projected their story to the world... that they may on opposite sides of the fence of a concentration camp (he a prisoner, and she a girl who slipped him food through the fence) and were later reunited years later. This was yet another story that tugged longingly at Oprah Winfrey's heart-strings, only to launch her (and the rest of us) into profound shock and betrayal.
Basically, as the story has been reviewed, historically challenged and the Rosenblats forced to repent, I wonder - and have wondered for months - why their touching story, fiction though it was, "had" to be published as non-fiction, a true story, an actual experience... instead of a novel. Mr. Rosenblat has said (in the Today Show article): "I wanted to bring happiness to people... to make good in this world." But, apparently, the only way to truly bring that happiness was to make people believe it had actually happened.
What if it had been published as a novel? Does that mean that a message of hope of overcoming certain agony and oppression would not render the "right" degree of happiness for readers? It utterly perplexes me that Mr. and Mrs. Rosenblat considered lying necessary! And that so many others (also mentioned in the msnbc article) have resorted to dishonesty in a wayward attempt to legitimize their art! And in the end it renders sadness and an endless wave of suspicion on other writers.
The story of the "Angel at the Fence" may be fiction, but it was inspired by real experiences - that need to spread a message of hope and joy to the world. It simply cannot be real, but as a work of fiction it would still have a geniune place in the halls of Holocaust literature. And, as fiction, it would not be an attempt to be something it is not.
It makes me sad that the world wants "true" stories when the stories that come from our souls and the deepest, unfathomable depths our creative cores are "true" too.
Wow, that's really interesting. I hadn't been following that story much. I find your take on it really interesting as well.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me, a little, of a bit in Brideshead Revisited in which one character says to another, "You can't believe in things because they're lovely ideas," and the other one says, "Why not? Anyway, that's HOW I believe them."
One thing that does complicate the whole story-as-real dynamic here, though, is that it's about the Holocaust. In some ways, I think of that period of history as "salted ground" that really shouldn't be used to grow anything or make any stories...I'm quite ambivalent about a lot "Holocaust literature," especially the ones aimed at kids.
It does strike me as a huge and revolting insult to the people who actually suffered and died in the Holocaust to "make up" a story that way and then make a colossal profit of money and fame off of telling people that it's true. How much of the story is fabricated, anyway? Were the Rosenblats in the camps at all?
Anyway, I'd never really approached this recent spate of fabricated memoirs with the eye of an artist, and I don't know why. Thanks for bringing our attention to it!
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.
William -
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly what I was thinking about! Thanks for sharing! I grew up - oddly enough - reading a lot about the Holocaust, despite having no Jewish background. I read the diary of Anne Frank (which I am rereading now), and from there many other accounts of the horror of that time period... and I really do see it as a delicate period in history. More than delicate - it is pain so intricately woven into the fabric of several generations who lived through it. And I've come to the conclusion - thinking deeply about the Rosenblats - is that you can't simply make up your own version of the suffering. You cannot invent a story and expect to be a geniune part of that suffering. It is disrespectful... and unbearably sad, turning the world's attention away from the real, powerful stories that bonded real people together.
And that gets me thinking even more on the Rosenblats. Mr. Rosenblat was indeed in the camps (to answer your question, Michie!), but I suspect that Mrs. Rosenblat was not. Simply put, I keep wondering why this couple felt they had to present this lie to the world. Is his survival inside a concentration camp (Auschwitz, I believe) somehow insignificant?
I do not believe I can actually be the proper judge of whether or not people "are allowed" or "should" use fiction to discuss the struggles of the Holocaust. It is not an easy issue when millions upon millions of people died, lives altered forever in the worst case of genocide the world has ever known. Judging from how Holocaust scholars have reacted, with a fair degree of anger, I'd say the answer is dependent on the nature of the story being told. A story of a little girl - unconnected to the camps - throwing bread to a boy on the other side may contain one too many stretches.
Here's something else I was thinking of. I've not only read Anne Frank's diary, but a book by Hannah Goslar, one of her friends. When Hannah and her father and sister were taken to a camp sort of in a separate purpose, she encountered Anne suffering on the other side of the fence. She threw her own Red Cross food bundle over the fence to Anne. These reunions and the human struggle to find something familiar, to make sense out of ones own situation becomes the compelling story. That is not an opportunity every can have.
So, I wonder, did Herman Rosenblat not think his own story of survival in Auschwitz to be important enough for the world to hear?
I don't want to know the answer.