An author or storyteller is certainly entitled to compose his narrative as he sees fit, combining fact, fiction and fantasy to achieve the purpose of his story. But an author is also obliged to represent his work accurately, disclosing what is fact and what indeed is fiction, part fiction or imagination remembered as reality. As important as an author’s work is his honesty, integrity and ethical conduct upon which his work stands.
After reading Mr. Rosenblat’s now abandoned work, Angel at The Fence, we are saddened that Mr. Rosenblat chose to add a number of small, but pivotal embellishments, and in so doing effectively discredited what is otherwise a credible, heart-wrenching and no doubt verifiable account of his time as boy in the death camps of Germany and the horrors he experienced there. The loss is all the more distressing, because as the remaining number of Holocaust surivivors dwindle, is is important to capture their unimpeachable accounts in the public record. We sympathize with the frustrations of Mr. Rosenblat’s partners, publishers and associates who accepted on good faith his work as an unembelished memoir. We understand the dismay of Holocaust Historians who work tirelessly to assert the facts of the Holocaust and ensure the integrity of survivor accounts as a way to counter antesemites and Holocaust deniers of which there are still far too many.
Mr. Rosenblat seemingly fanatasized that his wife of 50 years came as a girl to nourish him by tossing apples to him over the barbed wire at Buchenwald’s subcamp, Schlibien. He told this fiction to himself and to others and integrated it seamlessly into his otherwise factual account. It is beyond our expertise to know how Holocaust surviviors cope with their trauma. Do they deny, try to forget, sugar coat, rationalize or fantasize fiction along with truth? Perhaps the coping mechanisms are as individual as the survivors themselves.
As the events of the Holocaust recede into history, authors, artists, historians, commentators and the world community are responsible for deciding upon the right and proper ways to memorialize these grave events, to integrate them into art, into culture and into the collective consciousness. It is an important conversation and one we hope this conroversy will stimulate. We also hope that those who enter the discourse do so with humility, openeness, tolerance and respect.
No untruth is permissable, especially one that has far-reaching and serious consequences. But beneath every lie is motivation and intent. We believe Mr. Rosenblat’s motivations and mistakes were very human and forgivable.
