The more I think about it, the more this Herman Rosenblat business pisses me off. You probably already know he's the latest writer caught fabricating a spectacular memoir. But do you know how the whole ball got rolling? He entered a contest the New York Post ran searching for the best love story. Mr. Rosenblat wrote a "quick couple paragraphs" about an "angel" who visited while he was imprisoned in a concentration camp. A cute little girl in a red dress appeared at the barbed wire fence with bits of food to keep him going: an apple, a piece of bread, a bit of cheese. These offerings provided him with nourishment but primarily gave him hope and the strength to carry on. Torture was no match for this selfless little angel who proved to him that deep down inside people are basically good at heart. Naturally when he ran into her again some years later he jumped at the chance to marry her, and their life together has been truly blessed.
Naturally this heart-warming little story won the contest, and Mr. Rosenblat got an all-expenses-paid night on the town, complete with candlelit dinner, a limo, and tickets to a Broadway show. And the next thing you know Oprah's heard about it, and he gets a free trip to Chicago to be on her show.
Then comes the book deal, and the movie rights.
It's ironic: Mr. Rosenblat defends himself by saying he invented the story to give people hope, but instead the stunt seems to stomp it out. I enter a lot of essay contests, and I've yet to win one. Now I know why. I mean, what chance do us truth-tellers have when other people enter with impossible lies?
Still, despite the human failings we see here, I hold out hope. While my chances of transcending the dire human condition seem squashed like the dirt beneath that little girl's fictional feet, something tells me that my steadfast commitment to honesty will eventually find its reward. Call me naive, call me simple, but despite the fact that every new day seems to bring more proof to the contrary, my new year's resolution is to hold onto that optimism, to never let go of that belief that people are basically good. And one day soon, once the rest of the world comes to the realization that truth alone is the righteous path, the phone will ring for me, too, and an excited voice will announce that I've won an essay contest with my truthful tale of meeting Diego, the guy who tenderly tickled my balls at a Miami Beach gang bang.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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3 comments:
The story he came up with sounds like The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, a fictional tale of a boy in a concentration camp who makes friends with a boy on the outside. Only they don't end up married.
If you haven't seen the movie yet (it's out now), I highly recommend it.
Happy New Year!
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.
There 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.
YOY, I gave up on Holocaust films years ago. I get enough horror in real life, so I look to films for entertainment and distraction. I can't believe I watched "Young @ Heart" the other night thinking it would be a pleasant diversion. It's about a chorus of octogenarians who sing punk songs. How wacky! How fun! Oops, another one died.
Kimberly, I totally agree. Every one of these literary fraud cases seems like a bad joke. Like you say, it's easy enough to check for veracity. Instead the agents, publishers, et al. hope the public will buy in without asking any difficult questions. It's a fantastic story! We'll make millions! But then some busybody pokes up with contradictory evidence -- like "You know, it really wouldn't have been possible to pass food through the fence at an internment camp" -- and all of a sudden they're all, "Hey, that bastard author TRICKED US!"
It's preposterous. It's stupid. Like you say, it does a disservice to everyone, in particular people telling real stories that don't tie up quite as well as fiction. The Rosenblat film should definitely be derailed.
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