.......and God Sent an Angel with an Apple
August 1942. Piotrkow, Poland. The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously.
All the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated. 'Whatever you do,' Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me,'don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen'.
I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off.That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker. An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down,then asked my age.'Sixteen,' I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.
My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people.
I whispered to Isidore, 'Why?' He didn't answer. I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her. 'No,' she said sternly. 'Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers. She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.
My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers. 'Don't call me Herman anymore.' I said to my brothers. 'Call me 94983.'
I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator.
I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number. Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps near Berlin. One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice. Son, she said softly but clearly, I am sending you an angel. Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.
A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a young girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German.
'Do you have something eat?' She didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, 'I'll see you tomorrow.'
I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about her just a kind farm girl except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.
Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia. 'Don't return,' I told the girl that day. 'We're leaving.' I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.
We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 A.M. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
At 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too.
Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved.
I served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.
One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. 'I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date.'
A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.
The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.
We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, 'Where were you,' she asked softly, 'during the war?'
'The camps,' I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget. She nodded. 'My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin,' she told me. 'My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.' I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were, both survivors, in a new world.
'There was a camp next to the farm.' Roma continued. 'I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.'
What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. 'What did he look like? I asked. He was tall. Skinny. Hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months.'
My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be. 'Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?' Roma looked at me in amazement.
'Yes,' That was me!'
I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it. My angel.
'I'm not letting you go.' I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait. 'You're crazy!' she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go. That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren I have never let her go.
Herman Rosenblat
Miami Beach,Florida
This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman Rosenblat as he was bar mitzvahed at age 75. This story is being made into a movie called The Fence.
UPDATE:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/196/story_19675_1.html
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/news/atoz/article_1005963.php
Alias Barack Obama: a lie is born: The greatest identity fraud in history Paperback – July 10, 2012
Poison Ivies: DEI and the Downfall of the Ivy League
-
"The review of Ivy League practices by our CriticalRace.org project
reflects substantial efforts by Ivy League schools to purport to comply
with the Supr...
4 comments:
this story is SO not true! google for real truth of it...
Planned Holocaust "memoir" said by some to be a hoax now
This is pure conjecture, but interesting nonetheless...
NEW YORK -- When Oprah and the Assciated Press trumpeted the amazing
love story of two Holocaust survivors who
allegedly met on a blind date in 1958 in the USA and recalled that
same night that they had been young "friends" in a Nazi camp in 1943,
when she, living in nearby village and posing as a Christian girl
(although she was Jewish) threw apples over a fence to feed the young
teenager -- his "angel at the fence" -- little did the media outlets
know that he was telling a great big fat fib. His
autobiography, ghostwritten by an un-nnamed writer and coming in at
300 pages from a major New York publisher and set for a February 2009
national laydown, has now been said to be shown to be
a hoax. Perhaps. Think James Frey and other Holocaust "memoirs" that later
turned out to be fake.
A respected Jewish historian has discovered that the entire backstory
that he the media -- and also a Newsday reporter in New York a few
years ago -- is
a complete hoax.
The confidant tells this reporter: "I spent time today with a Jewish man, also a
Holcolaust survivor , who
knows thus old man very well....up close and personal...... He was
closer with his late older brother, , but he knows him too.
This man is greatly concerned about the autobiography
soon to be published. He knew of the story for many
years now, had been asked about it by other survivors, and he worries
about its impact.
"The story is a figment of his imagination. There is not a word
of truth in what he is saying. I feel sick.... (by the appearance of
the story)," the man, who was in the same Nazi camp as the author, says.
"Even his late older brother , now dead, was embarassed and ashamed
by his story. He didn't know
where the story came from."
The man also says he knew the author for years and never head the story
until the 1990s. He never mentioned over the years how he met his
wife in a camp, never told the media backstory, period.
This man is especially concerned that a concoction like this puts a
lie to and undermines serious Holocaust memoirs.
"It is really sad," this Holocaust survivor who doubts the truth of
his backstory, says, and notes he has proof to back it up. " I
read these stories (i.e., untruthful or
embellished stories). They always upset me. If someone would
investigate it, he would expose it easily. They (such authors) are
not even aware of the inconsistencies."
UPDATE: One day after the author confessed that he had
embellished major parts of his new Holcaust memoir ...... the focus turned to
his publisher and the news organizations that helped publicize what
appeared to be a genuine and true Holocaust autobiography.
The book's publisher said on Tuesday that there was nothing else that
he or the book's editor, could have done to prevent the author
from embellishing.
"In hindsight we can second-guess all day things we could have looked
for or found," he said. "The fact is that the author went to
extraordinary lengths: he provided people who vouched for him. There
was a Jewish historian professor who vouched for his backstory, and a
writer who had written about him that seemed to corroborate her
story." He added that the author had signed a contract in which he had
legally promised to tell the truth. "The one thing we wish," the
editor said, "is that the author had told us the truth."
The publisher has recalled nearly 50,000 copies of the book and is
offering refunds to book buyers.
The editor said she also trusted the author because his memoir had come
through "a respected literary agent" who had in turn been referred to
the author by a writer whom the editor had worked with previously.
Despite editing the book in the aftermath of the scandal surrounding
James Frey, author of a best-selling memoir, "A Million Little
Pieces," who admitted making up or exaggerating details in his account
of drug addiction and recovery, the editor of the new book said
she did not independently check parts of the man's story or perform
any kind of background check. She said she relied on the author to tell
the truth.
"In the post-James Frey world, we all are more careful," she said. "I
had numerous conversations with him about the need
to be honest and the need to stick to the facts."
"There was no reason to doubt him , ever," the book's agent said.
Similarly, reporters from major wire services and top newspapers who
interviewed him were also taken in by his
backstory.
"The way I look at it is that it's just like when you get in a car and
drive to the store — you assume that the other drivers on the road
aren't psychopaths on a suicide mission," said one book critic.
The editor now said she wished she had been more skeptical and done
further fact-checking. "Of course I wish I could do it differently,"
she said. "I think a lot of other people were fooled before me."
The book critic said: "I was to some degree trusting that the vetting
process of a reputable book publisher was going to catch this level of
duplicity."
In a publishing landscape that has been rocked by scandals like Mr.
Frey's fabrications and the hoax perpetrated by Laura Albert, the
woman who posed as the novelist J T LeRoy, a supposed addict and son
of a West Virginia prostitute, other publishers and agents said their
business still operated on trust.
"It is not an industry capable of checking every last detail," said
an agent who represented J T LeRoy (without knowing he
was actually Ms. Albert) and Ishmael Beah, author of the best-selling
memoir "A Long Way Gone," who was recently accused by Australian
journalists of distorting his service as a child soldier in Sierra
Leone's civil war during the 1990s, a charge that he and his
publishers have repeatedly denied. "So to present yourself as
something you are not betrays all the trust."
Nan A. Talese, who published Mr. Frey's "A Million Little Pieces,"
said the combination of these recent episodes could start to change
the business's practices. "I think what editors are going to have to
do is point to the things that happened recently and say to their
authors, 'If there is anything in your book that can be discovered to
be untrue, you better let us know right now, and we'll deal with it
before we publish it,' " Ms. Talese said. But she added: "I don't
think there is any way you can fact-check every single book. It would
be very insulting and divisive in the author-editor relationship."
Sarah Crichton, publisher of her own imprint at Farrar, Straus &
Giroux and the editor of "A Long Way Gone," said she did some
background checking on Mr. Beah. "I come out of journalism and so I
certainly wanted to make sure the historical record was accurate,"
said Ms. Crichton, a former editor at Newsweek. "But I will confess
that I did the checking that I did also in part just to protect us,
because I knew that we were going to be publishing into a changed
landscape."
you want to know the real truth of Herman's story, or are you content to publish that nonsense from the AP and chain emails...? there was no apples over the fence, the girl he married was NOT the girl at the fence, because there was no apples over the fence....GOOGLE THIS.
at least show the other side of the "truth" too, no?
Planned Holocaust "memoir" said by some to be a hoax now
This is pure conjecture, but interesting nonetheless...
NEW YORK -- When Oprah and the Assciated Press trumpeted the amazing
love story of two Holocaust survivors who
allegedly met on a blind date in 1958 in the USA and recalled that
same night that they had been young "friends" in a Nazi camp in 1943,
when she, living in nearby village and posing as a Christian girl
(although she was Jewish) threw apples over a fence to feed the young
teenager -- his "angel at the fence" -- little did the media outlets
know that he was telling a great big fat fib. His
autobiography, ghostwritten by an un-nnamed writer and coming in at
300 pages from a major New York publisher and set for a February 2009
national laydown, has now been said to be shown to be
a hoax. Perhaps. Think James Frey and other Holocaust "memoirs" that later
turned out to be fake.
A respected Jewish historian has discovered that the entire backstory
that he the media -- and also a Newsday reporter in New York a few
years ago -- is
a complete hoax.
The confidant tells this reporter: "I spent time today with a Jewish man, also a
Holcolaust survivor , who
knows thus old man very well....up close and personal...... He was
closer with his late older brother, , but he knows him too.
This man is greatly concerned about the autobiography
soon to be published. He knew of the story for many
years now, had been asked about it by other survivors, and he worries
about its impact.
"The story is a figment of his imagination. There is not a word
of truth in what he is saying. I feel sick.... (by the appearance of
the story)," the man, who was in the same Nazi camp as the author, says.
"Even his late older brother , now dead, was embarassed and ashamed
by his story. He didn't know
where the story came from."
The man also says he knew the author for years and never head the story
until the 1990s. He never mentioned over the years how he met his
wife in a camp, never told the media backstory, period.
This man is especially concerned that a concoction like this puts a
lie to and undermines serious Holocaust memoirs.
"It is really sad," this Holocaust survivor who doubts the truth of
his backstory, says, and notes he has proof to back it up. " I
read these stories (i.e., untruthful or
embellished stories). They always upset me. If someone would
investigate it, he would expose it easily. They (such authors) are
not even aware of the inconsistencies."
UPDATE: One day after the author confessed that he had
embellished major parts of his new Holcaust memoir ...... the focus turned to
his publisher and the news organizations that helped publicize what
appeared to be a genuine and true Holocaust autobiography.
The book's publisher said on Tuesday that there was nothing else that
he or the book's editor, could have done to prevent the author
from embellishing.
"In hindsight we can second-guess all day things we could have looked
for or found," he said. "The fact is that the author went to
extraordinary lengths: he provided people who vouched for him. There
was a Jewish historian professor who vouched for his backstory, and a
writer who had written about him that seemed to corroborate her
story." He added that the author had signed a contract in which he had
legally promised to tell the truth. "The one thing we wish," the
editor said, "is that the author had told us the truth."
The publisher has recalled nearly 50,000 copies of the book and is
offering refunds to book buyers.
The editor said she also trusted the author because his memoir had come
through "a respected literary agent" who had in turn been referred to
the author by a writer whom the editor had worked with previously.
Despite editing the book in the aftermath of the scandal surrounding
James Frey, author of a best-selling memoir, "A Million Little
Pieces," who admitted making up or exaggerating details in his account
of drug addiction and recovery, the editor of the new book said
she did not independently check parts of the man's story or perform
any kind of background check. She said she relied on the author to tell
the truth.
"In the post-James Frey world, we all are more careful," she said. "I
had numerous conversations with him about the need
to be honest and the need to stick to the facts."
"There was no reason to doubt him , ever," the book's agent said.
Similarly, reporters from major wire services and top newspapers who
interviewed him were also taken in by his
backstory.
"The way I look at it is that it's just like when you get in a car and
drive to the store — you assume that the other drivers on the road
aren't psychopaths on a suicide mission," said one book critic.
The editor now said she wished she had been more skeptical and done
further fact-checking. "Of course I wish I could do it differently,"
she said. "I think a lot of other people were fooled before me."
The book critic said: "I was to some degree trusting that the vetting
process of a reputable book publisher was going to catch this level of
duplicity."
In a publishing landscape that has been rocked by scandals like Mr.
Frey's fabrications and the hoax perpetrated by Laura Albert, the
woman who posed as the novelist J T LeRoy, a supposed addict and son
of a West Virginia prostitute, other publishers and agents said their
business still operated on trust.
"It is not an industry capable of checking every last detail," said
an agent who represented J T LeRoy (without knowing he
was actually Ms. Albert) and Ishmael Beah, author of the best-selling
memoir "A Long Way Gone," who was recently accused by Australian
journalists of distorting his service as a child soldier in Sierra
Leone's civil war during the 1990s, a charge that he and his
publishers have repeatedly denied. "So to present yourself as
something you are not betrays all the trust."
Nan A. Talese, who published Mr. Frey's "A Million Little Pieces,"
said the combination of these recent episodes could start to change
the business's practices. "I think what editors are going to have to
do is point to the things that happened recently and say to their
authors, 'If there is anything in your book that can be discovered to
be untrue, you better let us know right now, and we'll deal with it
before we publish it,' " Ms. Talese said. But she added: "I don't
think there is any way you can fact-check every single book. It would
be very insulting and divisive in the author-editor relationship."
Sarah Crichton, publisher of her own imprint at Farrar, Straus &
Giroux and the editor of "A Long Way Gone," said she did some
background checking on Mr. Beah. "I come out of journalism and so I
certainly wanted to make sure the historical record was accurate,"
said Ms. Crichton, a former editor at Newsweek. "But I will confess
that I did the checking that I did also in part just to protect us,
because I knew that we were going to be publishing into a changed
landscape."
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