The children’s picture book, “Angel Girl,” is being pulled from store shelves, according to a message on the Lerner Publishing Group website. The company is offering refunds for returns and has put the brakes on all plans for reprints. Lerner officials took the action after Holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat admitted that part of his so-called true love story was a lie.
Since the mid-1990s, Rosenblat has told an incredible story of how a little girl brought food to him while he was in a Nazi Germany work camp. Years later, he claims they got married after meeting on a blind date. Rosenblat repeated the story in newspaper interviews and on “Oprah” twice!
Last September Lerner released, “Angel Girl,” which retells portions of Rosenblat’s fake love story. The author, Laurie Friedman, spent months with Rosenblat and his wife Roma, “…I wanted to find a way to share what I felt was an important and inspiring message for children.” Friedman thought the message was one of hope, but it turned out to be one of deceit.
Last weekend, Berkeley Books canceled plans to publish Rosenblat’s memoir, “Angel at the Fence:The True Story of A Love That Survived,” due out in February. The publisher is reportedly demanding the return of all advance money. Also, there was a movie in the works.
Experts have had doubts about the love story for a while. Yet it was a recent investigatve article in the New Republic that forced Rosenblat to concede that his love story was more fiction than fact.
