JOSSIP REPORTS — Gabe Sherman and The New Republic are getting all the credit for bringing down Oprah's house, exposing Herman Rosenblat's supposed memoir Angel at the Fence as a not-entirely-based-in-fact work of semi-fiction. But what about the guy who gave Sherman the story? Now that Sherman has exposed the hoax and officially branded Oprah as a haven for fake memoirists, somebody else is demanding some credit of his own.
His name is Dan Bloom (pictured right), he's an ex-pat freelance journalist living in Taiwan, former newspaper editor, author of five books including My Excellent Adventures Selling Books from a Pushcart in the Night Markets of Taiwan, and he says it took endless begging to get Sherman — or any other reporter — to even look at his hunch that Rosenblat was lying to the world.
Sherman broke the story of the farce memoir the day after Christmas, promptly shooting an email blast to the media gaggle in hopes of publicizing his story. It worked. The Associated Press was all over it; all the media sites globbed on; and anyone who ever held ill will toward Oprah was more than happy to point out her latest folly.
And then, on Dec. 29, TNR's blog The Plank posted an explanation of how Sherman (pictured right) broke the story, which sounds more like an editor's attempt to juice a good scoop than a reporter yearning to explain his process. Wrote the editors: "Based on interviews with top scholars, Sherman concluded that Herman Rosenblat likely fabricated his story of having been saved in a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp by a girl who threw apples to him over the fence."
Missing from the summation? The crucial contribution Mr. Bloom says he made. If it weren't for Bloom looking up Sherman's name (Bloom says he found Sherman from a Slate article questioning the authenticity of Ishmael Beah's child soldier memoir) and pestering him to talk to certain people who could call bullshit on Rosenblat's memoir, the story never would've materialized, and Oprah wouldn't have egg on her face.
To be sure, Bloom says "Sherman did a terrific reporting job" and "deserves a Pulitzer." But he sounds like a very bitter source, or at least a bitter middleman. Unable to report the story himself — because of "promises to my sources deep with the investigation" — Bloom tried his damnedest for eight weeks to find someone who could. And if what he says is true, he succeeded — but wants everyone to at least shake his hand and issue a job well done.
(What remains, unclear, then, is that if Bloom had "promises" to sources in Taiwan too deep to keep him from reporting the story himself, what changed between then and now — and now that Sherman's article is out — to allow him to go public with the information about how he was sitting on the scoop? If Bloom risked exposing his sources because he was in too deep, wouldn't coming out even now, and saying he knew all about this, identify and perhaps break the promises Bloom made to his own sources?)
But let us let Bloom explain it in his own words. He wrote in to Jossip:
QUOTE: "Over at The New Republic blog The Plank, the magazine's
editors offer a helpful recap of *how* their reporter successfully
exposed a Holocaust memoir as a hoax."It's true, Gabe Sherman did a terrific reporting job exposing how that
hoax memoir came to be. He deserves a Pulitzer award for that kind
reportage, really, because he took material supplied to him by several
sources and went even deeper and found amazing quotes from people
directly involved in the backstory, inforamtion that
nobody—nobody—ever knew for certain before—and certainly never said in
public before.But there is one thing you should know, Sara, and I am sure Gabe won't
mind me telling tales out of school. Gabe never heard of Herman or his
cockamamie backstory before a reporter who had been investigating the
matter for 2 months, based in Taiwan, go figure, called Gabe up at
midnight and badgered, pestered and cajoled him for three days and
nights into agreeing to take on this "assignment".What the TNR does not mention, not anywhere, I guess it is natural and
for promotioanl reasons of their own, is that their TNR reporter had
no idea about this "story" before he was contacted by me. And at
first, for the first two days of my barrage of emails and phone calls,
Gabe resisted, said he was busy with other things, and besides, how
did i know all these things—I knew, Sara, I knew, but according to my
promises to my sources deep with the investigation, I could not go
public with what I knew, and that's okay, from here in Taiwan, I did
not have a platform to publish what I knew anwyays.So I spent 8 weeks trying to find a reporter in the USA who would
listen to me, and believe me, and act. Gabe, who didn't know me from
Adam, at first was skeptical of this unknown blogger in far away
Taiwan calling him at all times of the day, and badgering his email
box with over 5o emails of names, tips, addresses, phone numbers, the
whole megillah, and at one point, Gabe—and I love the guy, he is salt
of the Earth and an ace reporter and he did the perfect job, nobody
else in US journalism could do what he did on this story, and I deeply
respect and admire him—Gabe at one point in our phone chats told me to
stop bugging him, stop calling him, stiop emailing him, and to go
away.Go away? No way. Not when I had the goods on Herman, and took it on as
my self appointed mission to try to stop that book from coming out
before it was published. Against the advice of those who were advising
me in the ongoing investigation group.They told me to "chill" and "give it a rest, Danny" and "we aren't
ready yet to go to the media, our reserach wont' be ready until the
end of January"—and i understood their concerns, but i knew
instinctively, Ben that if the book was published, once it was out of
the warehouse and into the bookstores, the damage would be done, the
book would be very hard to stop, what with all the coming Oprah PR and
the book tours and all the AP and Reuters stories about this lovely
couple, so I acted alone, on my own heartfelt instinct, that the time
to act was ASAP.I didn't know Gabe from Adam either. Never heard of him before. Of
course, I have been out of the USA for 20 years or so, so I am not
familiar with the new names in NYC and DC journalism, so I didn't know
him.How did I find him? Good story, Sara, and glad you asked. …[SMILE]
I was carrying out my investigation here in Taiwan of the Herman hoax
case using the internet and the blogosphere as my tools, plus my hunch
from the get go that the BLIND DATE part of the book was impossible,
not in this Universe, but a sweet touch, but completley off the wall,
so i was googling every search window I could find about earlier
hoaxes.And i found one item about a book by a child soldier nbamed Ishamel
Beah, and there was a big to do about this in Slate magaizne, writteny
by, are you ready?—drum roll—Gabriel Sherman!I think YOU were quoted in that story, too, Sara. Small world, getting
smaller every day.So i emailed him in a jiffy, found his website and emailed him, and he
wrote back in Internet time, "Danny, sounds interesting, Call me or I
will call you."Well, of course, he didn't call me. Nobody ever calls me back. Story
of my life. So I called him…. the very next day, and dished. I told
him everything I knew in a one hour phoen call,—My dime my time. He
said "all this is very interesting, Danny, but how do you know? It's
some people's word against Herman's word, and who are you? Why are you
so obessed with this story?"So we said goodbye on the phone, I told him I would email him more
damning news tip I had in my files, from top historians involved in
the case, and he said, Okay, keep me informed.I thought I had landed my fish, my big fish. The fish i needed to land
the final punch somewhere in thte USa media landscape.The top reporters at the NY Times and your own PW would not answer my
emails at all at first and then eventaully the Times reporters just
said , Yeah, we know about this issue, but we are mulling it over.
"Mulling it over"? It will take too long to mull it over. We need to
act now. Before the book is out. stop it in its tracks. PW never
answered at all. Shame on PW! Fire them all! Kidding.So I kept up my badgering campagn with dear ol' Gabe, who must be all
of 30, and here I am , all of 60, oi, and I never gave up. I knew he
was the guy to do this story, to pull the rabbit out of the hat, so to
speak, to lift the lid on this Pandora's Box of fabircations by a
sweet old man. I like Herman. I never had any animostiy against him. I
just wanted to epose the blind date thing.That was my sticking point. that is was got me invovled in this, when
i read a newspaper acocunt from the AP on October 12 about Herman and
the applkes and Roma and the blind date. Impossible, i said. I called
the AP reporter in Miami who wrote the AP story and said Matt, this
could not be true.He said,"Danny, it's what they told me. Who are we to question their
story? Until a smoking gun can be found, the media cannot report what
you are saying, Danny. Sorry."So i started looking for the smoking gun. I found many. Not on my own.
I am no historian, no forensic expert, i am a nobody. Just a lone
blogger with a mission. So ….I alerted the media in the USa all of
October and November and early December. The entire USa media force,
including PW, ignored my emails and phone calls. The Miami Herald,
too. I spoke the features editor there, he said, "thanks for calling,
interesting news tips: but he never acted.. Just sat on this story..anyways, back to gushing narrative of this story: I knew by Dec, 19 ,
i had to find a reporter , soon, do or die moment, so i kept bugging
Gabe until he finally said, "Look, Danny, you sound like a nice and
sane man, but please, enough of this calling me and emailing me
already…go away. leave me alone. I will make some calls, like you
suggested, using your leads and contacts, and let's see if there is a
story here."The rest is history, cultural history of our times, sad tragic
Holocaust history, too, and GAbe made it happen. The man!So that's the backstory of the backstory, and if you don't beleive a
word I typed, because most people never believe a word I say — I don't
know why, I am always right —.kidding — in fact, i am often wrong –
….ask Gabe!.He's on CNN and NPR and Canada TV now and it;s great. More power to
him. He helped expose a very sad and tragic episode in Jewish life.
And in American life and Oprah life. And in the publishing world. And
in Holocaust history.I salute his groundbreaking reportage, and consider him my brother for
life! OKAY, enough of this tale told out of school.—Danny, checking in
from a small village in southern Taiwan where nobody ever heard of
Rosenblat and has no idea what I am doing in the Internet cafe every
day, moving on to other things now……
Earlier: Excerpts From the Holocaust Memoir that Never Was
Earlier: Herman Rosenblat Survived the Holocaust to Lose Everything
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Dan Bloom to David
[show details 8:14 AM (11 minutes ago) Reply]
O. Internet time! Just read this item, David, and it's a good summary. I was sleeping, Taiwan time, when you emailed me that one last question, and by the time I replied, your blog had already gone to bed and it's in print now. No problemo, as we say in Chinese. You did a good write-up, and the only thing I want to qualify, VERY qualify, is that I am NOT a BITTER MIDDLEMAN. For the record: I love Gabriel Sherman, he did a bang-up job on those two exposes that lifted the lid off the Pandora's Box of Herman Rosenblat's sweet little fabrications, and I am glad I found him when I did. 100 percent happy and content and satisfied. I guess that did not come through in my typing-as-fast-as-I-can email "letter". That's how I typed. And think. Not very professional, I know. Sigh.
But I am not bitter. At all. NOT BITTER. Bitter is a word that does not exist in Dan Bloom's gadfly skull. I am a positive-energy eternal optimist of the grandest proportions, and I never hold grudges (more than one day!) and I am never never bitter. Look at my mug shot there! Does that look like a bitter man? No way. Goofy? Yes. Eccentric? Yes. A wildcard? Yes. A loose cannon? Sometimes. An obsessed with Herman's BLIND DATE meshagus blogger? Yes, for 8 weeks I was 24/7 obssessed, but I gained 4 pounds, go figure. Maybe obsessing is a good way to gain weight? I have no idea, but it works. Try it.
Anyways, NOT NOT NOT NOT "bitter" at all. I am the sweetist, nicest guy on Earth. Well, not Number One, but I am a nice guy, and I never go for bitter. But I do like to set the record straight from time to time.
In this case, it was not a case of sour grapes and bitter melons or crying to the media. My self appointed mission, David, which I took on last October 10 after reading the AP story about Herman and Roma and the new children's book called ANGEL GIRL — now also cancelled and refunds available — and seeing their sweet photo in the China Post newspaper here while sipping on my morning joe, at first, I read it with soft tears misting in my eyes, because I am by nature a sap for sweet, soft local-color newspaper features, and especially about an old Jewish couple — my people! — so I read it and loved it. Wow, I said. This is amazing. Love, the Holocaust, Nazis, a blind date on Coney Island, a children's book, 50 years of marriage, I love it. REALLY. That was my first reaction, David. Loved loved loved the backstory. Tears in heaven.
I clipped the story out of the newspaper, folded it into my pocket, hopped on my two-speed bicycle — forward and backward — and went to my "home office" at the nearby Internet cafe. I do not even own a computer. I am a Luddite. A proud, but humble Luddite. I hate machines.
Anways, David, that AP story was by my friend Matt Sedensky at the AP bureau in Miami, so as I read the article while sitting in the sunshine at a sidewalk Starbucks here in Tawain, with the byline by a pal of mine, I made a note to myself to send an email that day to Matt in Florida to say, WELL DONE, sir, great story, as I often do when I see bylines of my friends in the USA online. Richard Cohen, Maureen Dowd, Motoko Rich, Alex Beam, Nannette Asimov, Neil Steinberg, Neal Rubin, Ben Bradlee (no, kidding on the Ben Bradlee mention, we are not "friends", he does not know me from Adam, but I once interviwed with him in his Wash Post office back in the 70s when I was looking for a reporting job in DC. He told me to "get lost kid." I took his advice and promptly moved to Juneau, Alaska. Really.
Anyways, David, to make a long story short. When I read the AP story a second time in the afternoon two words poppped out at me in blinding bold letters: BLIND DATE. I know very little about the Holocaust, other than what everyone else knows, from movies and books and essays. And of course, as a Jew, I follow my people's history and culture closely, and get much of my strength as a human being from my Jewish roots and my Jewish upbringing and my Hebrew School ethics classes with Dr Miller, who taught us to always follow the truth, where-ever it does lead.
So this BLIND DATE thing about Herman and Roma's backstory seemed to me like an impossible thing. That kind of thing, a blind date whereby a man who was in a Nazi camp meets the SAME girl who threw him apples back in 1944, they meet again on a BLIND DATE in 1958 on Coney Island? No way, sir. I did not believe that for one minute, on second reading. On first reading, yes, I got taken in. So I emailed Matt in Miami and I said "This cannot be true, Matt" and in Internet time he wrote back and said "Danny, that is the story they tell and who are we to question it." And I understood what he meant.
Stiil, I was "livid". Not with anger, but livid with the way the media these days prints "anything" they get in a press release, without asking questions first. Ben Bradlee trained me to ask questions, to probe, to ascertain the truth. Especially of some cockamamie story that says BLIND DATE in it. Ask Ben. I have his email if you want.
So i started my self-appointed mission that day. To find the truth about that BLIND DATE. I already knew it was impossible. Not in this Universe! Maybe in Oprah's universe, yes, maybe in some New Age universe, yes, but not in Danny Bloom's universe.
Enter the blogosphere. For 8 weeks I probed and probed. Emailed and cold called. Met amazing people, top researchers, Holocaust historians, forensic document experts — a wonderful man named Peter Kubicek in Manhattan, a Holocaust survivor himself who guided me in my daily research — a saint! an angel! really! — and Steve Moffic in the Midest, a psychiatrist fromm Yale who knows alot about human nature and memory and culture and heroes and myths — ask him! his son is a rabbi in Chicago! — and Deborah Lipsstadt, an angel on Earth, and Ken Waltzer, Talmudic scholar of deep insight who has done a massive amount of research on "children of the Holocaust" — lots of people, and they all guided me along the way. What was my mission? Simply two words: BLIND DATE. Find out how to properly debunk the BLIND DATE thing in Herman's backstory. And along the way, I found that MANY people in the blogosphere actually LOVED the Herman backstory and believed him about the apples and the fence and the girl and the blind date and la la la.
Bitter? Me? No, David, not at all. I love life. Life is won-der-full. I wrote a book called "In the Eyes of a Child, It's Never Too Late To Begin Again", a huge bestseller here in Asia since 2001. You can see the video of it here:
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE (video poem)
http://www.dobhran.com/greetings/GRchildseyes.htm
and here is me singing my self-written NEW YEAR DANCE SONG:
NEW YEAR'S SONG
http://www.dailymotion.com/son.....2008_music
Does that look like a bitter man? No way. I smile all day. Life is beautiful. Of course, I'm 60 and I'll be dead soon, and don't I know it! So live every day one day at a time and appreciate every moment fully. Appreciate every day on Earth. I do. I do. Really.
And, David, I LIKE HERMAN and ROMA. I feel sorry that they got into this mess and I feel sad it has come to this, but these things happen, and it's over now. Herman has confesed, the book has been cancelled, the lawsuits have begun, and this story has legs. "It aint over till the fat lady sings.' (Try explaing what TAHT means to my students in Taiwan! Oh yes, I am an English teacher in Taiwan.)
Somebody should ask Roma what role she played in all this. I know that a lot of people want to know. Me, too.
But again, David, water under the bridge. Gabe Sherman did fantastic reporting on all this, and it's time to move on. I just wanted to tell the story behind the story, and to show a few people who might be interested the very small, minor role I played in all this. Bring down the hoax. And I know, sure, even if I wasn't involved in all this, even if I had never read that China Post newspaper story that day from Miami about the sweet married couple from Oprahland, the truth would have come out anyways sooner or later. I know that. I was not important here. I was not needed here. Those top PHD reseachers and forenic experts already had the goods on Herman way before I came along with my unorthodox contact-the-media Pr mavenship, and there would have been a news story about Herman's ahem "embellishments" later, after publication of the book, probably by Joseph Berger of the New York Times. He knew about this long before I did.
But I felt, David, that running a news story AFTER publication would be too late. The cat would be already out of the bag. The huge PR machine on Publisher's Row would have turned Herman and Roma into New Age magic mushrooms of Oprahfied everlastingness and hope, and all would well on Earth forever and ever. It that would have been okay.
David, none of this matters! I just wanted to find out if the BLIND DATE thing really happened. I still don't know. Does anyone know? And who was the real ghostwriter of the now-defunct book? I know Susan Margolis "polished" a manuscript somone gave her to polish and that she got paid for it. A nice freelance job. But WHO wrote the original text that she was given. Inquriing minds want to know.
But me, bitter? No way, sir. One happy man. I don't want to say "I am the happiest person on Earth" because I hate it when people say things like that — Kevin Costner once told me that in Tokyo at a press conference there when I was a cub reporter for the Yomiuri Shimubun — and that was pure BS, Kevin. Don't pull that stuff on me. We all suffer, we all have bad days, we are have blue periods. Don't get me started on this New Age stuff!
But yes, David, I am one of the happiest people on Earth, one of among maybe 4 billion who are happy. The other 3 billion are unhappy. I know. That's life.
NOTE TO YOU I SENT BY EMAIL YOU NEVER GOT BEFORE YOU WROTE HIS NICE POST ABOVE (except for the "bitter man" part, SMILE.)
EMAIL to david:
David, I guess that did not come through in my "love letter/ rant /inside story /Dear Sara" email I sent you. That letter was originally written two days ago to Sara Nelson, the head of PW there in NYC, she also blogged on the Hermangate story and the Oprah connection, and I posted a massive number of comments on her blog, about 25, trying to get her attention, I know her from her days at the NY POST, and ….finally ….. in Internet time…….she emailed me from her Blackberry Handheld Wireless [what's a Blackberry HW? We don't have those yet in Taiwan...!] …..on New Year's Eve…. and she said: "
Nelson, Sara (RBI-US) to me
show details Jan 1 (1 day ago) Reply
hi Dan. Ok i get it. Sorry i didnt know youd published this *scoop* first [on Oct 15 in RushPRnews.com website in Montreal]. You obviously raised the questions that gabriel sherman investigated. As far as i can tell tnr was the first to put all the pieces together. Have you been in touch with them?
Best
Sara
————————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld
Hi David
Hey, thanks for writing. You are the first NYC journalist to answer
any of my emails,…after Gabe Sherman of course, my go-to guy!
I will try to answer yuour questioon….if you need talk my cel is
886 + [garbled] in Taiwan
Oh by the way, that long rant essay poem love letter is NOT anti-Gabe
at all. I hope it did come across that way. I love the guy. He made it happen. that is why i went looking
for someone like him and I am way glad i found HIM…he did great
reporting….and I am 100000000% happy about what he did and how he
did it and go go go….i just wanted people to know that there was a
STORY behind the STORY…that GABE in NYC did NOT just one day say "HEY I
THINK I WILL LOOK INTO THIS HERMAN STORY"… actually, truth be told, he never heard of it
before, just like me, i never heard of it before Oct. 10th ………so i thought in the backrooms of journalism, some people
might want to know….but not sour grapes and not complaining….GABE
is my main man, I love him….i consider him a very good friend now
and I am in awe of his reporting on this story…he pulled the rabbits
out the hat….BINGO!
Now to answer
On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 11:27 PM, David Hauslaib @ Jossip
[garbled]@jossip.com> wrote:
Thanks Dan. Very interesting stuff here.
One significant question: If you have promises to sources there in Taiwan
that kept you from reporting the story, what changed between then and now?
[Dan answers, 8 hours later, Taiwan time, was sleeping, but too late: story went to press, er, screen already, see above]
OH NO, THE SOURCES I HAD PROMISES TO WERE IN USA, THEY ARE THE PEOPLE
GABE WENT TO, FOLLOWING THE TEL NUMBERS AND NAMES AND EMAILS I GAVE
HIM….they were Ken Waltzer and DEb Lipstadt. I had promised them I
would not go to media with their INFO, and I honor promises.
I am a pressman. I was born in a newsroom, more or less! and they
told me to "CHILL",…. "GIVE IT A REST",,,Deb and Ken did NOt want me to go
to media, they called me "meshuganah" and a wild card and even
worse…..things got rough for a while….but I DID NOT LISTEN TO
THEM,,,even though of course I respect them as scholars (but as media contact people, they don't know how to approach the media, I do!]…..it's in my genes…..I knew we needed to stop BOOk BEFORE PUB DATE….that was my
goal from Oct 10 onward…and these guys were doing research…..well, fuck, the world
can't wait…..can it? …so i moved on my own…. found GABE on my own, by
chance, lucky find…he was the man, he is da man! so my SoURCES
were in USA…..they had the smoking gun and i gave the smoking gun
names to GABE…he called them,,,… cold calls…but on my recommendation……asked if what i was saying was
legit…because honestly GABE at first thought i was a nutcase and
TOLD ME TO "STOP CALLING" HIM… "GO AWAY"…haha….but i never go away when I
have a mission…. and those sources gave GABE the smoking guns he
needed to nail the story, see?
it was a story waiting to be
nailed….Deb and Ken and Sharon and Colleen and others in Europe too …ask Ken……they assembled an amazing TeAM…..i was just the MEDIA WATERBOY…the PR ERRAND BOY…..THEY did all the heavy lifting, research,…i was
just the gadfly on the wall with a PR sense of media mavenship……I
knew we had to get the NYC or DC press to shine a light on this
story…..i sent info to all the papers, NY Times even, WASh Post, everywhere, Miami Herald, but they did not reply…….a few reporters and editors in November told me they were "MULLInG iT OVER, THANKS DANNY" and for 8
weeks i was in nowhereland…..but when I found GABE, i knew the story
would fly…..because of his SLATE article on BEAH story and he knew the publishing industy well and how it works ….and it did work …..in spades…and it is not over
yet….MORE HUGE NEWS develping as we speak…ask Gabe, he's the reporter…..I just feed him stuff… that's my role here…
sometimes i signed my emails to him "DEEP YARMULKE" — thought Ben Bradlee would get a kick out of that!
DAVID AGIAN: "and now that Sherman's article is out, to allow you to go public with the
> storyline about how you were sitting on the scoop? That is: If you couldn't
> expose (or whatever) your sources there because you were in too deep,
> wouldn't coming out even now, and saying you knew all about this, identify
> and perhaps break the promises you made to your own sources? "
DANNY AGIAN
DAVID,
**GOOD QUESTION AND I SEE YOUR POINT. No, the sources *were* Ken and Deb — and the things they told me by email I could not divulge, but i did it anyway ..but only to Gabe….."on background" –don't you love these Watergate terms! — in a bid to get and MAINTAIN his attentiin,….he asked me "HOW DID YOU GET THIS INFO? DANNY" and these "QUOTES, how did you get them?" …… and i said call KEN AND DEB and they will CONFIRM…ebcauaes THEY gave it all to me…..I was on their team,…but acted as guerilla press contact without their permission..but I KNEW I WAS DOING THE RIGHT THING…my INNER OPRAH TOLD ME……….and you know what, DAVI,D not one person on this "team" even GAbe, ever said "ThANKS DANNY" to me, not one………is "THANKS" a dirty word in America now? now? ……..wow…….I mean. ……I made this story happen in the media, i gave a BOOST to all their careers and not one word of thanks…????? just six letters: T H A N K S……… and their names are in all the papers now and they are are all on CNN and NPr and CBS and ABC and it's great, I am happy for them, they are spreading important news about Holocaust education and awarenes, more power to them…I don't want to be on TV or in the limelight at all, I work best in the shadows, that is HOW i made this happen, sheer persistennce and never give up deterimnation and never taking NO for an answer….and all becahse of that BLIND DATE meshagus!
BUT I AM NOT complainng, David, no no no….maybe my Bloomian sense of humor did NOT come through very well in that comic rant………everything worked out perfect…because the
goal was to stop the book. BEFORE pud date. and the book is stopped. i have no
complaints…just curious why nobody has said "THANKS DANNY"
is that a crime now in the USA? to say "ThANKS"?
just got an email just now from Richard Cohen at WASH POST, old
friend, he said "DAN i wish i had listened to you better when you
contacted me but i was busy…etc etc"
See@ EVERYONE WAS TOO BUSY TO HAVE TIME TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT THIS HERMANGATE story. Only me, i had time on my hands. I always make time for what i need to do. Story of my life.
By the way, david, Daniel Klein up in Great Barrington, author of that great book PLATO AND　PLATYPUS WALK INTO A BAR, he's my best friend in America, great pal, brother of brothers, and he kept me in good humor and in good form as I battled the UNRESPOSNIVENESS of the US media to this story. he counselled me as he always does, in our copious emails: "Danny, never give up. Someday your ship will come in…"
Well, David, I am still waiting….
Oh, David, and one more thing. My work on bringing down the hoax, as waterboy / errand boy / Deep Yarmulke, is over. Time to move on…
And what I am doing now, on my own inner advice, is this: I have started a grassroots internet campaign to ask Oprah to invite Herman and Roma back her show one more time, one last time, in order to give Herman a chance to apologize, to the public and to her and to his fellow Holocaust survivors…..and for Herman to show remorse, ask forgiveness, hug Oprah on air, on stage, …and then to move on with his life. Some people have criticized me for going in this direction, but that's okay, I understand their objections to what I am doing, and I respect their objections, but once again, I am following the ethics lessons I learned in Hebrew School classes with Dr Miller ．．．(see above comment: we nicknamed him "KILLER WITH　MILLER"）．．． and I feel, strongly, deeply, inside my gut, just the way I didn't believe the BLIND DATE thing, and went after it with all my Internet might, not to hurt Herman but to disprove the Blind Date thing, ….I had a bet with myself that I was right, and I didn't want to lose….. so in the same way, with the same sense of life, I now hope that Oprah can invite Herman back on the show one last time for a round of apologies, hugs all around, cheek kisses, air kisses, whatever is de rigeur these days, pardon my French…AND for to give Oprah herself a chance to apologize to her fans, to her viewers, and to her book club fans who came THIS close to getting bamboozled again. [James Frey, anyone?]…But this time, I hope and am sure Oprah will not castigate dear old elderly Herman, but offer him a hug in friendship and compassion, while also telling him it was good to admit the lie, get it over with, and then for Oprah to say goodbye to Herman,"live", on national TV. It might be an Oprah moment to savor. It might be a Herman moment. Who knows, it might even be a Danny Bloom moment! Kdding, kdding.
So here is the website and there is a place for people to comment in this new idea, pro and con. I am in touch with Oprah's producers at this very moment, a nice lady named Melody, if you want her email David I can dish offline here, and I hope this Oprah show can in some way give closure to this sad chapter in book publishing history and public gullibity about almost everything — psyhics! UFOs! paranormal BS that can see dead people! ghosts! aliens! alien abductions! life after death! omigod, the list goes on and on! Mark Twain was right, there's a sucker born every minute! — kidding, kidding, it's okay to believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus if you are under ten — but come on, America, grow up!
So take a look and reax welcome. Feed me feedback. Oprah will see it and she will decide. It's her ballgame now. I know she will do the right thing. I like Oprah. Always have. I like everybody, David. Except David Duke, I do not like him. But I like all people, and Oprah is okay in my book. I know alot of people dissed her for falling for Herman's BLIND DATE malarkey [Yiddish for ''meshagus'', Oprah, if you are reading this!], but she was just going along with the story that she read about in Guideposts and Chicken Soup for the Meshagus Blind Date Thing by barbara D'Angelis. Hey, maybe Barb can go on the show and hug Herman and Roma, too. Really. I am looking forward to seeing the hug show. I wish Leo Buscaglia was still around, he woould really love it, and I know Leo, too, David, I met him up in Alaska when he came to Juneau to speak there. A great man, deeply missed by all who knew him.
So read: good idea? bad idea? all comments welcome. I know some people NEVER want to see or hear Herman Rosenblat again. I feel he is an old man who suffered enough in life already, neh?, and he didn't tell this tall tale to hurt people (although it did hurt people and hopefully he has learned a big lesson now, at his age, 80!), so why not give him a second chance to redeem himself as a mensch. Do the right thing, Herman. Be a mensch. No more embellishments, UNLESS you callit a fable or fiction and then anything goes, sure. Doesn't America still believe in second chance? I know Oprah does. I have watched her show for years. YEARS. They even know who she is here in Taiwan!
http://ijcm101.blogspot.com/
Ask Oprah to invite Herman Rosenblat on her show to apologize for literary fabrication
I am creating a national write-in campaign here with a grassroots effort to ask Oprah to invite Herman on her show in future to apologzie, ask forgiveness, explain why he did it and how
Monday, December 29, 2008
Asking Oprah to invite Herman Rosenblat on her show one more time to apologize for his literary fabrication, explain why he did it, ask forgiveness
I am creating a national write-in campaign here with a grassroots effort to ask Oprah to invite Herman on her show in future to apologzie, ask forgiveness, explain why he did and how and … to move on with his life quietly and out of the spotlight.
I have already been in touch with Oprah's producers and there is a good chance this might happen. Oprah will not attack Herman on air the way she did with James Frey after his deceptions were uncovered. In this case, she will allow Herman to answer to the public, explain himself, apologize and ask forgiveness, from Oprah and the public, for his literary faux pas.
PLEASE leave your comments below. You may frame them as a letter to Oprah, which her producers in Chicago will read online here, and you can make your voice heard about asking Oprah to invite Herman on her show one last time to explain himself, to apologize to Oprah and the public, to ask forgiveness and to move on with this life from the point onward. We believe that he is a good man, and that he just made a wrong decision by sticking with his made-up story for so long. Now that the fabrication has been exposed by the media and his book cancelled, it is time for Oprah to invite him on her show and let him explain himself to her and to the public. I think there will be a teaching moment here for everyone, for Oprah too, for Herman, too, and for the viewing public.
I am in touch with Oprah's producers by email and phone now, and am waiting word on what they will do with this suggestion. There is no group sponsoring this write in campaign, just one lone blogger following his heart.
Posted by dan at 6:27 PM 44 comments
http://www.boston.com/bostongl.....paign=8315
I gotta give a plug to this funny oped piece today by Danny Klein up in Great Barrington. He wrote the "Half-Jewish" book with his Dutch journalist wife Freke Vuijst. [He also co-wrote the PLATO and a PLATYPUS (walk into a bar) series , now translated into Chinese here in Taiwan with a funny title in Mandarin. It's Greek to me. Tom Cathcart out on Cape Code was Danny's co-conspirator on that series. Heard they sold millions. Who knew?
A friend in Colorado, Buddhist practioner, college friend, Sarah, she writes:
"Wow, interesting, Danny! I am a culturally-totally-out-of-it sort, myself, had vaguely heard the outlines of the story and just thought, wow…how amazing is that? and am so glad you dogged it so hard to get to what is real there, because it matters!"
"I sent the story of your doggedness on the Herman Rosenblat book case off to my magazine in Holland — it was a struggle to pare it down to just 500 words." writes Freke Vuijst in Massachusetts.
I am Hidetoshi Abe in Tokyo. This is all very interesting. I have one question that I hope someone in the U.S. will ask Herman and Roma: "Why did you do it?"
He actually wrote in an email to Middleman-san:
"Salut.
I've read Gabe Sherman's TNR report, that was really nice, very fair.
Somebody should ask Herman and Roma a simple question like Helen
Thomas : "Why did you do it ?"
Japanese journalism needs a Ben Bradlee. :-D
This also explains even better:
http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/2.....s-who.html
QUOTE
Meet the Sleuths Who Helped Expose the Fraud
[by Colleen Fitzgerald, one of the amazing sleuths, printed on her website]
Misha Defonseca was not saved by wolves, nor was Herman Rosenblat saved by love apples.
Their successes at defrauding the public with their stories of Holocaust survival have been derailed by Identifinders forensic genealogists Sharon Sergeant and Colleen Fitzpatrick. They worked with distinguished members of the Jewish community to expose Herman Rosenblat's fraudulent Holocaust memoire. The result was a careful reconstruction of the true story.
In a world built on information technology, the key to Identifinders'
success was using team building and technology to derive meaningful information from those facts.
Even though there had been an outcry from Holocaust survivors that Herman's story was historically inaccurate and defied their own experiences in the camps, the publisher Berkley Penguin Press initially defended the work based on the idea that no one can argue with someone else's memory. In spite of its subjective nature, however, memory can be tested to see if it is anchored in reality.
Herman's experiences during his life in the camps did not occur in a vacuum. By the time that Herman Rosenblat publicly admitted that his love story Angel at the Fence was a fabrication, he was doing damage control.
By building the context based on what could be documented, we separated fact from fiction. We created a timeline for both Herman's family the Rosenblats and Roma's paternal and maternal families the Radzickis (changed to Rogers) and the Zalctregers.
Aside from his historical inaccuracies, Identifinders found for example that Herman's chronology was not as he stated. Clues from people who had been in the camps with Herman led us to Dr. Ken Waltzer, Professor of Jewish Studies at Michigan State University. Dr.
Waltzer is an expert on the youth who survived Buchenwald and provided Herman's actual history in that camp as opposed to what Herman represented. Waltzer also expanded the team to assemble objective proof that the circumstances at Schlieben did not support Herman's story.
Identifinders meanwhile focused on obtaining evidence on the location of Roma Radzicki Rosenblat's extended family during the Holocaust. The inconsistencies of Roma's part of the story were just as significant but not as prominent.
Most of the Radzickis and the Zalctregers perished in the Holocaust.
But a few of Roma's immediate family survived and emigrated first to Israel, then to the United States. Identifinders traced her remaining extended family to the present day. The clues from the surviving relatives converged on the fact that Roma was nowhere near Schlieben.
None of this would have been possible had Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, Professor at Emory University, not raised a red flag last year on her blog about the truth of Herman's story. Danny Bloom, an author of children's books in Taiwan, read Dr. Lipstadt's comments and took up the challenge after Angel Girl, the children's version, came out in September. He was instrumental in convincing the media that the story needed attention. He also contacted Identifinders knowing we had exposed Misha Defonseca. Peter Kubichek, a concentration camp survivor and author, provided coherent background information that was valuable in understanding how concentration camp survivors viewed Herman's story.
This is just one example of how Forensic Genealogy has become an interdisciplinary approach for discovering the truth behind frauds, as well as for locating DNA references, finding missing persons, determining identity, and provenance.
— Colleen Fitzpatrick
Jules in Shanghai writes, after reading this Jossip post: "Quite a story, Danny, and the only problem with saying you're not bitter so often is people thinking you are … strange world ,but you keep it interesting."
Jeff, a freshman at college in SF, says: "dan! wow! is this the story that you once told me a long time ago was a secret? and that i'd find out someday? this is great~"
Jan Hunt in Oregon says: "Danny:…..Interesting! Glad this info got out in time. Oprah seems rather gullible and naive for someone in her position."
Aviva Hellerstein somewhere in cyberspace says:
"Dear dear friend!…
what absolute bliss to have heard from you after such a long period of NOT having heard from you!!!!
needless to say, your story is simply AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!
and if Gabe had been a mench he would have given you FULL credit for it in HIS report!!!!!!!!!!!
but go find "menchim" nowadays!!!!!!!!!
it's like looking for a needle in a haystack!!!!!!!!!!!
this whole hoax is terribly terribly sad, and in some kinda crazy way I almost feel sorry for this couple, who felt that all this was necessary to enrich their lives!!!!!!!
go figure, Danny!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
DANNY ADDS TO AVIVA: Gabe IS a mensch, a true mensch. He said "thanks" by doing the story, and doing such a good job with it. That was THANKS enough. Still,, true, it's nice to hear "thanks" once in a while….
PS: I thanked myself. Nobody else is gonna do it for me.
Labyl, aka Lionel, in Maine, writes in:
"Danny, — No surprise that you had to fight long and hard to make it clear that a hoax had been perpetrated. Journalism is no longer ( if it ever was) a pursuit of the truth; rather, too many in the media are more intent on acting as advocates for their ideology. Your perseverance is to be applauded. We don't need scam artists profiting on the horror of the Holocaust."
John B, my Hollywood screenwriter friend out in LA, he wrotre the screenplays for two big movies in the 1990s and seems to be living off royalties now with his Swedish wife in LA:
"Wow Danny! Are you saying YOU were the guy who originally discovered this? [DANNY: NO!]……(It seemed a little foggy in the beginning as to whether it was you or a fellow reporter). Either way I'm impressed. Can't wait to tell my friends that I know you. Proud to know you.
Next time, get in touch with me. I still have a few media contacts here.
Happy Holiday and a big CONGRATS for this amazing bit of journalism. (You should get some credit for this — is Gabe at least mentioning you?)"
DANNY TO JOHN: "Gabe has not mentioned my name in any of his many interviews on CNN and NPR. I think he is just protecting me as is Deep Yarmulke source. I understand. But I know he appreciates the carefully-wrapped "news tips" I delivered to him on a silver platter two weeks ago. We talk on the phone from time to time still, and on New Year's Eve, he Blackbarried, well he did, I emailed. Never heard of a Blackberry. Here in Taiwan they call them HEI SIR or something, meaning God knows what!"
Donald, in LaJolla, emails:
"Danny, that's amazing! I had hardly paid any attention to the Rosenblat story — it was part of the background noise of daily information — but we were talking about it right after seeing "The Reader," which is a totally different kind of Holocaust story, and someone mentioned that the hoax book is being made into a movie, but as fiction. And fiction it should be — thanks to you and the team you were working for as "waterboy".
Is there any way you can tell us — without breaking any promises — the kind of information you had that brought this story down?"
DANNY TO DONALD: connect the dots …. or ask Gabe. He knows. See his fine reporting here: http://www.tnr.com
Nanette, sister of Eric at th Times, she's out in SF at the Chronicle, she says:
"Dan,
You shoulda called me!
Investigations R Us, over here at the SF Chronicle.
I've done stories bringing to light the shenanigans of
superintendents, school principals, Scientologists, charter schools, and
more.
I'm glad you found Gabe. He did a terrific job.
But I would have loved to hear from you on this one!
How did you know the Rosenblat story was a hoax?
Wishing you all the best, and a happy New Year!"
DANNY TO NANETTE (the niece of a famous sci fi writer): I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS A HOAX. THE RESEARCHERS KEN AND DEB AND SHARON AND PETER AND COLLEEN AND MORE, THEY FOUND OUT AND PROVED IT WAS A HOAX. ALL I KNEW WHAT THE BLIND DATE NEVER HAPPENED. I'M A ROMANTIC, TOO!
"That story was interesting. I'm curious about something…what exactly was the hoax? …and how is Oprah involved? "
– Ellen in East Bridgewater, Mass.
so this guy sherman stole the story, made a name for himself, and thinks he will go onto cnn. probably where he belongs. i spoke the sherm on the phone many times. an opportunist with kind of a new york ethnic, classless, way about him. a bottom feeder who instead of reporting on darfur or gaza ends up focusing on an 80 year old holocuast victim. not the stuff of pulitzers. my hope is he'll fade away to a life on newsday. hey danny, if you read this, how many times did you see shattered glass? learn anything?
Hi Mick.
Online now. Finally, another poster. I was getting lonely taling to myself above.
Well, let me say, Gabriel did NOT steal the story, he got it the way many journalists get stories, through a source, or throigh multiples sources, contacts…..and in this case, it was a cold-calling source he didn't know of, moi, and as a good journalist he listened to my schpiel, and also like many a journalist he initially doubted my reliability and schpieliality, and seemed uninterested. But I kept pressing, beacuse i KNEW there was a HUGE story here, and I need HIM to do the heavy lifting, the deep reporting. In my book, which I haven't written yet, smile, he did a great job, professional all the way down the line. The proof is in the pudding, no? He nailed the guy, he nailed the book, he stopped the train.
Mick, I never saw Shattered Glass and never read the book, it happened when I was out of the country, but I know about all the ins and outs. But never saw the movie. I was drinking sake in Tokyo at that time. Lost in Translation is more my kind of movie.
But thanks for keeping me company here, sir. Stiil, I must say, in defense of Mr Sherman, he's a good man, and I like him, a true professional. I was his first source, I turned him on to the main sources, he interviewed everyone, he got the get. That's pretty good reporting, in my book.
OOPS. I think I went overboard in above rants. One of my PHD critics, a very nice man who lives in Ivory Tower world of academia, where everything is well-appointed and tenure rules the day, tells me, very angry, after reading this Jossip post by David:
"Dan, I've seen this Jossio post and I am not thrilled about it — you seem out of control to me. Focused on yourself."
My response: "Hey, sir, I need to relax, too, from time to time. I can't always be chasing down liteary hoaxes. I don't have tenure and I don't have any sabbaticals. This is my way if winding down after 10 weeks of 24/7 hoax busting work. It's a "voice" you see above, sir, my writing "voice". Sorry you don't cotton to it. We live in different worlds, you in academia, me in bohemia. We can co-exist, no?"
Neal Rubin, one hell of a nice guy and an ace newspaper columnist at the Detroit News, and also writer of the Gil Thorpe cartoon, did you know? yes, he said to me just now:
Dan –
This is all very cool. And I loved your note about not being bitter — a terrific piece of writing.
Congratulations on the whole megillah.
(Did I use that right?)
– Neal
Peter Kubicek, a 78 year old Holocaust survivor, who is really a saint and an angel and played a bigger role in all this most people know, really, and who is mentioned [above] in my long sily rant, to me: [MORE MEGILLAH TALK]. I LOVE IT!
Thanks, Danny,
for letting me read this terrific *megillah* of yours. And not even Edith, my
wonderful wife of 49 years, has ever called me a saint and an angel.
I first offered this story on August 6, 2008 to [reporter name] at The New York Times who had once
written an article about me. She suggested [another Times reporter name] as the best man for
the job. I had lots of email exchanges and phone calls with him. He was skeptical.
I asked him to check with Dr Deborah Lipstadt at Emory University; he said he did. So, I wrote back,
"Nu, what did she say?" He wrote, "She agrees with you." And then he went
nowhere with the information I had given him about this Holocaust backstory hoax of Herma's.
[Ed Note: AUGUST! Four months ago! And the Gray Lady just sat on it. Peter had the goods on Herman way back then. See CJR! There were many people working on this story from many angles.]
After the Gabe Sherman's TNR story broke, this New York Times reporter I had contacted back in August, wrote to me by email, "See tomorrow's Times."
I wrote him
a letter of congratulations in which I said that his news story that appeared in the Times the next day, AFTER the New Republic broke the news nationwide, worldwide, brought to mind
the Yiddish expression "esroigim nach sukkes"– which I trust he understood.
— Peter
[DANNY SAYS: "esroigim nach sukkes"?-- TRANSLATION ANYONE? Something like "that's like eating esroigim for Succhos?" But are esroigim? Anybody know. My Succhos vocabulary is dimming in middle age....]
Reporter Steve up in Toronot, with IPS, says: "Danny, see you've been busy. Is this where the media cutbacks are taking us, where facts don't really matter as long as it is a 'good' story ?
And the "bitter" comment says more about the jossip blogger than anything. You are the least bitter man I know. Take care."
Rudy Shur, a great guy out on Long Island who runs a very savvy publishing company called Square One Publishers, which put out "TAKING WOODSTOCK" last year, and the book has an amazing backstory too — O Gabe! Can you do something on this in June when the movie comes out? What movie? Read on — the memoir about Woodstock by [fill in name here later, oh yeah, memory came back, Elliot Tiber] and which ANG LEE, the great Taiwanese film director is directing as a comedy, — with same title TAKING WOODSTOCK, and ask me David, why what the title means, it has an amazing backstory too, just the title, and Anthony Pomes at SQ One came up with the title, too, a marketing maven he is, and — ANG LEE with a comedy, yes, and early days says it's gonna be a great ANG LEE movie, I love the guy, his hometown is just a few mk frm my apartment here in southern Taiwan, and David ask me THIS IS A SCOOP, never reported in USA before, only in Taiwan in the Taipei Times, how the book by Tiber ended up in ANG LEE's hands, by complete serendipity — RUDY said:
Hi Dan,
Well, I don't think you missed anything [in your long meggilah]. I might have cut down on the number of denials on the "bitter man" thing, but hey, that's me. [DANNY SAYS: GUILTY AS CHARGED!]
I am glad to know that you are really happy in life. Of course being 62 myself, I hadn't realized how close to death I am. Thanks for the reminder. For most of my life, I too have been a cockeyed optimist — in what seemed to be a sea of pessimists. I always thought it was the way my brain was wired, but I really didn't care as long as the reception was clear. And I always felt sorry for those who didn't get it.
In any case, I'm glad the truth is out about Herman and Roma, Interesting way to start 2009.
Happy New Year!
Rudy
There is really more to Rosenblat's falsehoods than the ""Apples Over the Fence" fairy tale. The current impression given by respected commentators is that apart from the fictitious apple romance, Rosenblat, as a genuine concentration camp survivor, must be respected for the other parts of his story.
Not so. Once the success of the Apple hoax gave him fame and fortune, Rosenblat started improvising other tales of his experiences in the camps of Buchenwald and Theresienstadt which are both hair-raising and demonstrably false. I would be glad to go into details, but for now, suffice to say, that not a word Rosenblat said then and says now can be taken at face value. It is not a question of his false memory; the fact is that Rosenblat seems to be a pathological liar. He, and some of his enablers such as Harold Salomon, now try to portray him as a misunderstood benefactor of mankind. The truth is that he has done irreparable damage to the memory of the Holocaust and the only kind thing he could now do is to henceforth keep his mouth firmly shut. Holocaust deniers and the anti-semitic lunatic fringe are already quoting his spurious tales as proof that all Jews are liars
Oprah Won’t Get Fooled Again, or will she?
by Roger FOX NEWS Friedman
How do we measure 2008? Wasn’t it the year of Oprah? She selected the new president of the United States, tried to start a new age cult, avoided a major fire at her Montecito mansion, her mom got sued by a department store, and we discovered she’d been in bed, so to speak, with Obama’s political rivals all along. Oh, yes, one more thing: there was a scandal at her self named Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa involving abuse and harassment of students. Just toward the end of the year, she announced she’d gained 40 pounds—not surprising with all that stress!
Now, just before we sneak out of 2008, Oprah gets hit again: she’s endorsed yet another memoir that turns out to be a fake. A bad guy named Herman Rosenblat, a Holocaust survivor no less, who’d dined out on a make believe story about his experiences in a concentration camp, sold her a bill of goods. He sold it not only to Oprah, but to a publisher, as well as countless groups he’d spoken to over the years.
Rosenblat had been trying out his story for years. When Oprah heard it, about Rosenblat and his now-wife tossing apples over a fence to each other at a Buchenwald subcamp in Poland circa 1945, she called it “the single greatest love story, in 22 years of doing this show, we've ever told on the air.†In the story, the kids never saw each other, but were reunited years later, after World War II, by accident. They fell in love, and married. How do you like them apples?
It’s not like this was a new story to Oprah when Rosenblatt sold his story to book publishers. He and his wife first told it in 1996—twelve years ago—on Oprah’s show. It’s still on her website. On that first show, Rosenblatt stood and declared, "Darling, you've fed me when I was hungry. You fed me when we were married. You fed me … until now. But now I'm not hungry anymore, and I'm hungry for your love!"
The couple became Oprah regulars. In 2007, they returned and Herman re-proposed to his wife. He said, “Sweetheart, it was 64 years ago when I first saw you," he says to Roma. "My mother came to me and said to me, 'I'm sending you an angel.' And a couple of days later you appeared at the other side of the fence while I was in a concentration camp. Then in 1957, 14 years later, I had a blind date, and it was you. Now our 50th anniversary is coming up. With this ring, my dear, I pronounce my love for you forever. And as this ring has got no end, my love for you doesn't have any end."
Oprah told them, "You have become the beautiful metaphor for what love can be," Oprah says. "For endurance, and fate and destiny."
It’s the second time Oprah has been fooled by a memoirist. The first time was James Frey, the guy who made up a whole rehab-addiction story that Oprah enthusiastically promoted in her book blub. It turned out he’d made the whole thing up. He wasn’t even contrite when he reappeared on her show to explain what he’d done.
It’s not like Rosenblat wasn’t in a concentration camp. Kenneth Waltzer — director of Jewish Studies at Michigan State University — was a key member of the team that disproved Rosenblat’s apples story. He noted, however, that Rosenblat had been in a subcamp of Buchenwald with his two brothers and that his wife had been forced into hiding.
The account of how the Rosenblats came to be exposed was revealed a week ago in The New Republic by Gabriel Sherman. It’s a fascinating story. Since then, the Rosenblats’ book, Angel at the Fence, has been canceled by Berkley Books. Even worse: family members who knew Rosenblat had made up the apples story had kept quiet for the last 12 years. What were they thinking?
As one scholar points out in Sherman’s article, the real danger of the Rosenblats is that it feeds into the world of Holocaust denial. As we’ve noted before, that group actually has a face in Mel Gibson’s father, Hutton Gibson. There are people who claim the Holocaust never happened. When a story like the Rosenblat’s is disproven, it only feeds their craziness.
Oprah could not have known the Rosenblats were lying. Even in 1996, it would have been above and beyond her abilities to challenge the couple. After all, they were in concentration camps. Let’s not forget that. Whatever they saw or endured was pretty bad. Their lies cannot be compared to Frey’s. Their experiences—Rosenblat vs. Frey—is like comparing apples to oranges. Or nuts.
Book publishers do not fact check memoirists, or any authors, for that matter. They merely “vet†books for legal improprieties, so they don’t get sued. They never have fact checked memoirs, which is why back in 1995, Lorenzo Carcaterra’s book, “Sleepers,†got into so much trouble. My sources then detailed how he made it up from other people’s lives. Carcaterra stood by his book. But it was fiction. He was discredited.
You’d think after that incident, publishers would have been more wary. But there have been many more fake memoirs since then. In the Rosenblats’ case, you can see how it happened. Someone at Berkley Books probably said, “But they’ve been on Oprah twice. She loves them.†The tantalizing prospect of a promotional appearance on Oprah’s show was too good pass up. Oprah is god to book publishers. She’s all they have left to sell books.
William Faulkner—whose books Oprah should have her audience reading, and not this contemporary junk—wrote in his novel, "Light in August:" “Memory believes before knowing remembers.†The next line is: “Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.†That’s Herman Rosenblat’s problem. He believed his apples-over-the-fence story so long it became true to him. I’d rather hear what really happened to him at Buchenwald, or what he saw—get to the “core†of the story, if you will. But let’s let Oprah, at least, off the hook on this one. In a season of pardons, she and even Herman Rosenblat are innocents.
DANY SAYS: It's interesting how SOME people do not like the Times so much. Me, i love the NY Times, grew up reading reading the SUnday edition every Sunday, DUH, in Masscashuest as a kid, my Dad was from Brooklyn so he made sure we all read the TImes on Sunday, and I still read the international edition over here in Taiwan on Tuesdays where it appears as an 8 page supplent in the Lien Her Bao newspaper. But one of my correspodentsm, a retired guy living in Maine he says to me today:
"It is not surprising that the NY Times "…had to mull it over…". While you're googling,incessantly — nights must be long in Taiwan — research the Times "coverage" of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime. It was shameful! Start with the Boston Globe…you'll find the rest.
A glicklech Nahye Yur!
Excuse the Ashkenazi accent."
David,
Why would you slam Oprah? It's not her fault that someone lied to her.
Blake,
Are you Blake E. by any chance? Hi!
NO, David is correct to blame Oprah and her staff of New Age feel good nincompoops. Yes, Hermano lied to her, but anyone with any ounce of street smarts would know that the cockamamie blind date story Hermano and Romacelli were telling was BS…..Oprah is very much to blame for not having a good BS detector in her EQ locker….. truth be told………
but let's move on….I am now asking OPrah to invite Herman on hwe show one last time for a hug fest, apology fest, and forgiveness fest and move on fest……. Keith Kelly at NY POst just emailed me about this and said "Danny, you are kidding about this, right?" I said no Keith, I am completement serious!
First, i take down the book, and nobody took me seriously abck then, and now I take a step forward, with this Oprah invite Herman idea, and again, the MSM refuses to take me seriously? Why is that? Do I have a sign on my forehead that says "Do Not Take Danny BLoom Seriously"? No, the sign says "Take Me Seriously, I am completley serious here."
see the press release here, which no MSM will print or report on, just like they wouldn't report on my scoop back in October when I told them….
http://ijcm101.blogspot.com
– Danny "very serious" BLoom
David…….there is one thing i think many people still do not understand about all this, and in fact the MSM has been loathe to listen to me from day one, but i know the truth here. This book was not Herman's idea. Herman did not write the book. There is a cabal behind Herman which pushed and connived and manipulated Herman to go forward as the so-called "author" of this now-defunct memoir.– the MSM does not want to report this, as usual, ears blocked when i come calling, close doors! — But the truth is that there was and is a cabal behind Herman and Roma that instigated this entire affair. Herman cannot even write, for God's sake.
There is a scandal behind this scandal and nobody is asking the right questions… and I know the answers. Why doesn't somebody ask me? I am NOT kdding about this. It is very scary and strange and sad. Ask and I shall tell. But as usual, the MSM is three months behind the curve, or the curb, and they will not look into this until after I spill the beans again to Gabe, IF he will listen to me, or some other enterprising reporter. You are all missing the handwriting on the wall. This was never about Herman and Roma. This was and is about the cabal behind them. It is NOT a pretty picture, trust me. When the truth of this cabal comes out, you will fall of your chairs in disbelief and shock and also with a sigh of "Aha, so that is what this was all about!"
ask me. gently.
Someone in NYC who knew the Rosenblats notes: IMPORTANT NEW INFO
Someone in NYC who knew the Rosenblats notes: IMPORTANT NEW INFO
"There are so many question about Herman and Roma both of whom I know
personally. My brother grew up with their son, Kenny. If Herman made it up,
why did Roma go along? Did Herman "give" this memory to Roma? If this memory
came to him in a dream, well, it's a dream. Around the time of the dream
Herman and Kenny were shot in a robbery attempt (and I'm not sure the
location of this was accurate in the magazine article that Monica posted).
Herman was hospitalized. Kenny was left permanently parazlized. Roma, well,
was never ever the same. In an act of American violence, everything they
lived for was gone.
Now, what? What to live for now?
This just makes me wonder again and again and marvel about how little we
know about the human spirit, how much the human spirit can take before it
breaks, or breaks and tries to regrow.How words an formats and
classifications we try to impose on human experience breaks down when there
simply is no genre.
I'm not making any exuses for Herman. Or Roma. Or the embellishents of a
story that continued by Herman to his friends for many years. But sometimes
our quest for truth blinds us to what we are really should be noticing."
name withheld
NYC
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pb...../901080333
Looks like Bloom WAS telling the truth: from Neal Rubin's column in Motor City:
He was a key part of an investigation that should have been done by Rosenblat's publisher, but instead wound up being conducted by a reporter from the New Republic who was pestered into action by a strikingly eccentric American expatriate in Taiwan.
In Taiwan, a former newspaper editor named Daniel Bloom read about the forthcoming book — which has now been scrubbed — and simply didn't buy it. He began calling and e-mailing state- side reporters, among them Gabriel Sherman of the New Republic, who dialed Waltzer at MSU.
The real truth here: OPED rejected by Boston Globe, Ny Times, and Wash Post and LA Times…but truth lives in Asia…SMILE
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/co.....itizen.htm
How 'citizen journalism' blogs uncovered a Holocaust hoax
Long live the blogosphere, and I'll tell you why. A chance encounter by an alert blogger in Taiwan with a wire story in The China Post in early October began a chain of events worldwide that led to uncovering a literary hoax in New York — and the cancellation of an “Oprah-approved†book. True story. Read on.
The China Post covered the news of his hoax thoroughly, publishing five wire service articles from early October to late December. You might have read the news in this newspaper: an elderly Holocaust survivor named Herman Rosenblat was invited to appear on Oprah Winfrey's popular TV show in Chicago twice, once in 1996 and again in 2008, to “tell a tale†of how he survived life in a Nazi concentration camp (this was true), when a little girl threw apples to him over a fence (this was untrue).
He told American media that he met this same woman, Roma, now his wife (true), on a “blind date†in New York in 1958 (not true), and after finding out she was the same girl who allegedly threw apples to him in wartime Germany, he immediately proposed to her (also not true).
It sounded like a great, romantic story, and Oprah fell for it — twice. Thousands of bloggers around the world did, too, as well as senders of millions of chain email letters. The problem was — well, it just wasn't true at all.
Now I want to tell you why this story might be interesting for readers — and bloggers — in Taiwan. The aforementioned blogger spent some of his spare time during the last three months of the year using the blogosphere to follow a very strong “hunch†that Mr. Rosenblat's “blind date†backstory was full of holes.
And his hunch proved correct. The sad story of yet another literary hoax was exposed by a magazine reporter in New York, after receiving “the smoking gun†evidence from the Taiwan-based blogger in a barrage of emails and long midnight phone calls.
To learn more and help expose the hoax, our blogger here contacted top Holocaust historians in America and found that they, too, were aware of the hoax. In fact, it was these Jewish historians who found the evidence that Mr. Rosenblat's account included false details, as they had been looking into the “story†for over a year.
However, being busy professors, with books to write and papers to publish, they didn't have time to spend pestering the U.S. news media to report the hoax and stop the book before it reached bookstores. But the blogger in Taiwan found a good reporter in New York who was willing to expose the hoax, and Gabriel Sherman came on board at the last minute. Although Sherman had never before heard of Rosenblat, on Christmas Day, the New Republic magazine published his two-part expose of the hoax, and the publishers pulled the book the very next day. Case closed? Almost.
After Mr. Rosenblat — who really was a Holocaust survivor and suffered much in his teenage years in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, admitted he had “fabricated†and “embellished†major parts of his book (not for money or fame, but rather for emotional reasons that psychiatrists will explain some day in the future) — his book became history.
How do I know all this? I was that blogger.
â€(NOTE ON GABRIEL SHERMAN and origins of this investigation into the Rosenblats: A number of people were involved in this investigation. The Taiwan-based freelance journalist Danny Bloom was the catalyst in contacting other journalists about the story. Sherman became interested. The New Republic assigned Sherman to investigate. Another key was a Michigan State University professor. An excellent overview of the investigation was written by Neal Rubin of the Detroit Free Press.)â€
Mr Bloom, sir:
Herman Rosenblat the author has admitted the book is a lie. I have no idea why you say the new book from York Press that is coming out is "new and improved." What could possibly be improved about it? Everyone is talking about the hoax of this book. This film will never be made. [Would you invest money in making this movie?] It would be nice if Oprah took down her comments and the entire Herman story that is still UP on her website……[you use the term "allowed" as if someone has some power to control what she has up there]. My guess is that eventually it will disappear from her site. No one has the power to make her do so. Any pressure that is exerted will make her dig in her heels.
Done, you won. Time of move on.
– AD, your friend from OSU in Corvallis
Was the mainstream media derelict in reporting the Rosenblat hoax memoir story?
A lone blogger in Taiwan seems to think so. Read his take here
[http://globalwishingwell.blogspot.com] and make up your own mind. He
says he gave credible news tips to reporters at the New York Times,
the AP, PW and the Miami Herald long before he finally found Gabriel
Sherman to expose the book before pubication in a hard-hitting
two-part series for the New Republic, which led to Penguin cancelling
Herman Rosenblat's Holocaust memoir titled "Angel at the Fence." Did
the mainstream media ignore this story for too long, even when they
were hand-delivered the "smoking gun" news tips? It appears they were
asleep at the wheel and bear some responsiblity for the hoax having
such a long Oprah-approved shelf life.
Danny B. seems too isolated away from his country and out of control and DEFINITELY focused on himself. If this keeps up, no reporter or journalist will listen to outside sources for the risk of a behind-the-scenes free-for-all of "it was me", "no, I told him", "I called him first", "me, me, it was ME who sounded the alert", ad nauseum. The main credit still goes to Gabe Sherman of the New Republic for weeding through the mountain of verbosity from Mr. Bloom and finding the threads to begin to weave his full story aided by multiple sources.
Brevity, Mr. Bloom, Brevity.
Sandy, re:
"The main credit still goes to Gabe Sherman of the New Republic for weeding through the mountain of verbosity from Mr. Bloom and finding the threads to begin to weave his full story aided by multiple sources."
Yes. I. Agree. Completely. SMILE
someone should look into the background of dan bloom. is there a criminal past? if someone takes a good look they will find stuff that makes rosenblat look like a saint. come on gabe get to the dirty knickers on danny!
Harris, you should really get a life. Peter and Deborah and Ken and Sharon and Colleen are all into you, er, onto you. Gabe"s got your game. you must be nuts if you keep posting here like this. nobody believes one word you say, not even penelope or SARAHlynn anymore. you are finished, big boy. there never was a dan bloom here. you got hoodwinked.