Pulled from the Shelves - Angel Girl Inspired by Bogus Memoir: The Angel at the Fence

January 3, 2009

by Suzan Abrams

in Dublin

USA: Lerner Publishing Group has pulled out Angel Girl from its shelves after learning that Oprah Winfrey's favourite Holocaust love story featuring Herman and Roma Rosenblat in their memoir The Angel at the Fence, was a fraud.

Carolhroda Books published Angel Girl which desribed a part of Mr. Rosenblat's story on how he had received food from a girl on the other side of the fence, by Laurie Friedman who is creator of the popular Mallory series, in September 2008.

Many years later, the two friends would on meeting on a blind date in America, marry. In reality, the newly-confirmed fraudster Miami tv repairman, Herman did wed Roma in 1958 and they have been together ever since.

In The Angel at the Fence, Rosenblat has confessed that although his concentration camp stories were true, he had made up the love story, the scenes on his meetings with a girl and that he had also fabricated the chance reunion.

Friedman who first learnt of the couple's story online, contacted them to write Angel Girl. She interviewed the couple for her story and has now expressed acute disappointment at having been misled by the Rosenblats.

All future reprints of Angel Girl have been cancelled and refunds are currently being issued on returned books. The picture book is being recalled from the market and is no longer on sale.

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Read my earlier entry on the bogus memoir: The Angel at the Fence.