Those who write these stories know that if you doubt them, they can accuse you of being "anti-jewish".

Almost everyone who survived Bergen-Belsen, Dachau or Buchenwald are now dead. Making up fictional stories about life in the camps, which later get debunked, is just like throwing gasoline on the fire for "historians" like David Irving.

RE: "So the Rosenblats (and other fake memoirists) are basically using a cheap trick to manipulate the emotions of readers and attract more attention to their books."

It wasn't the Rosenblats who were using a cheap trick, it was the people behind them, whoever they were or are, who brought this book idea to the publishers, it was the handlers who were manipulating the Rosenblats, after they told their fake blind date story to the New York Post in 1994 or so. THEY are not innocent, of course. THEY, the two of them, kept the lie alive and kept fibbing. But it was the group behind them, who wrote the text that became the book, who were really scoundrels. The Rosenblats were just an old elderly couple who went along for the ride. Now Mr Hoaxman, find out who this mysterious group is or was? This story still has legs, believe you me!

There's more to this news story than meets the eye. Even now the MSM is not telling the entire story. Read this and then ask some questions:

"I am the mystery person who brought this fake book hoax to the
attention of the media, two months before publication date, and I am
the person who fed the "story" to the New Republic reporter who wrote
the two hardhitting reports that led to Herman's confession and the
book being cancelled.

How did I do this, all the way from Taiwan, far far away from New York
City and Dallas and all the top historians who were looking into this?

Ask me.

Funny, nobody has bothered to ask the New Republic reporter
how he "stumbled" upon this amazing yet sad story. He didn't find it
himself. His editor did not assign it to him. A soft-spoken gumshoe in
far away Taiwan spent 8 weeks, 24/7, chasing down this book hoax story
using the only tools he had available to him: the Internet, blogs,
websites and email, and the occasional well-placed phone call. And
this invisible gumshoe overseas did all his work on his own dime and
his own time, not being employed or paid by any university or
newspaper, just working from his own gut instincts that this SOON TO
BE PUBLISHED MEMOIR was a big lie.....but nobody in the US press corps
would believe him, even after he sent news tips to top reporters at
the New York Times, the Boston Globe, even the Dallas Morning News
here, yes, and the AP and UPI and Reuters and JTA, but nobody would
return his phone calls or emails. The media just ignored his news
tips. All of which turned out to be true. They ignored him because
they did not know who he was, emailing from far away Taiwan with a
supposedly "URGENT NEWS TIP", and they were busy.

CONTIUNED

"But finally, around
December 21, this "mystery person" who was told to CHILL and GIVE IT A
REST by top historians looking into the case, who did not even know
there was a BOOK coming out until he told them, these top PHD
historians told him to CHILL, telling him the "time was not ripe yet
to go to the media, and anyways, don't worry, the New York Times will
cover this at the end of January when we have all our info
done"...this mystery person cold called reporter Gabriel Sherman in
NYC, from his home office in Taiwan, and tried to tell Mr Sherman that
these news tips he had sent him by email were important and ThaT THERE
WAS A STORY HERE, but the reporter was busy with other things and
tried to brush the news tipper off, and anyways, he didn't really
believe this news tipper was legit, so he ignored the news tips again
and again for three days, but finally a midnight phone call, pleading
with Sherman to get off his tuches and start investigating, and giving
him the names of all the top PHD historians who had the inside skinny
on the hoax, only then, did the reporter, who finally did a great job
of reporting, but who had never heard of the case only 3 days before,
finally the reporter went into action. BRAVO! But who brought this
story to the attention of the New Republic, and even more importantly,
much more importantly, WHY? Ask me...."

OK, Danny, I'll bite.

Who?

Why?

Dear Cranky Media Guy, You must be Alex, I guess, since you knew my email address. SMILE. Email me again offline here and I will dish. It is an interesting story, a most interesting story. About this sad, tragic book hoax. Which was not meant to end this way, and was not meant to be a real hoax, just a pretend make believe hoax, but a hoax is a hoax, and Poor Herman shoulda known better. I think he did know better. I think he got carried away by the attention and he could not stop. Call it "spotlight addiction". I mean he went from a nobody TV repairman with a son in a wheelchair from a shooting/robbery attempt to the front page of N Y Post in 1995 with a huge photo of him and his wife, winning the Romantic Love Story contest, and from there it just spiralled. I think some people behind him pushed him into all this meshagus, promising more media spotlight and glory. Money was not his goal, nor was fame his goal. His "fix" was for the media spotlight, again and again. His wish came true. Be careful what you wish for, or should I say, be careful what you are addicted to. Me, I am addicted to....LIFE!

CMG is Alex?
Wow.

No, I'm not Alex and I didn't write to Danny. I DON'T know his email address. All I did was post the short message above. Period.

Wow, it feels like this thread is turning into its own hoax!

And Danny, you're going to have to be far more forthcoming and cogent to convince people on this site that you really have something to say.

Cogency wouldn't seem to be Danny's strongest suit.

I'd like to point out the reason that these things are not published as fiction. It's been mentioned before, and I'm surprised that Alex isn't aware, as often as these hoaxes have struck recently.

The fact is, there is a glut of fiction on the market. Everyone and their uncle is writing fiction these days hoping to be published. I know several and I have nothing to do with the publishing or writing industries and neither do they. Furthermore, plenty of them are decent, with good stories, but there just isn't the market.

On the other hand, compelling real life stories are relatively rare, and the market is quite big for them. People who won't touch a fiction story will read any touching real life story they can get there hands on.

As a result, it's simply far, far easier to publish a non fiction story.

Cogent Danny says see here:

Take two aspirin and call me in the morning:

http://www.jossip.com/the-guy-who-wants-credit-for-breaking-the-latest-oprah-memoir-scandal-20090102

Bringing Down the Hoax

by Danny Uncogent Bloom



Long live the blogospere, and I'll tell you why.

A chance encounter with an Associated Press story that appeared in a
local newspaper here on October 12 started a chain of events that led
to the uncovering of a literary hoax in New York by a lone blogger in
Taiwan -- and the
before-publication cancellation of the book.


You might have read the news: an elderly Holocaust survivor named
Herman Rosenblat, now 80, was invited to appear on Oprah Winfrey's popular TV
show in Chicago twice, once in 1996 and again in 2007, to tell his
"tale" of how he survived life in a Nazi concentration camp when a
little girl threw apples to him over a fence.

Years later, he told Oprah, he met this same woman, Roma, on a "blind
date" in New York in 1958 and after finding out that she was the same
girl who threw apples to him in wartime Germany, he immediately proposed
to her and married her two months later.

Great story, and Oprah fell for it -- twice. Thousands of bloggers
around the world did, too, as well as millions of chain
email letters. Problem was -- it wasn't true at all.

And here's the kicker: that lone blogger in Taiwan, alerted to the story
from reading the local papers that day in October, spent the next
eight weeks using the blogosphere and his email machine at a local
smoke-filled Internet cafe to try to get the book stopped
before publication. And he succeeded.

Oprah wasn't the only one who fell for Rosenblat's romantic story
about surviving the Holocaust and find love. A publisher
in New York fell for it head over heels and planned to publish a
300-page "memoir" titled
"Angel at the Fence", to expected great fanfare, on February 3, 2009.
In addition, a respected children's book publisher in Minneapolis also
fell for the story and
did publish a 24-page illustrated book titled "Angel Girl" last
September.

What readers of the subsequent newspaper stories about the book's
cancellation over the recent Christmas holidays in the U.S. probably
do not know is how a hoax-savvy
citizen journalist who smelled
something fishy in the original AP story last October used the
Internet to try to stop a book from being published in New York.


.

During a hectic but stimulating eight-week period this blogger in
Taiwan contacted top Holocaust researchers in America and over 25
major newspapers and news agencies in North America, Britain and
Australia. He even published two news articles about the hoax on
websites in Montreal and San Diego, but apparently nobody read them
and the major newspapers never replied to his email "news tips"
fowarding his published articles. The mainstream media just was not
interested in a blogger from Taiwan knocking on their doors with a hot
news story in his hands.

So the blogger did the next best thing to contacting major newspaers
in the U.S; he contacted a reporter for the New Republic magazine by
email and fed him the news. While the magazine reporter, based in New
York, had never heard of Herman Rosenblat before or his memoir, he
listened to three days of phone calls and emails and finally decided
that maybe there was something to all this after all.

On December 25, the New Republic published a two-part expose of Herman
Rosenblat's literary hoax, and the publishers cancelled the book the
very next day, with subsequent articles in the New York Times and over
500 other papers around the world, including Chinese-language
newspapers here in Taiwan, from the Apple Daily to the Liberty Times.
Gabriel Sherman, the reporter, went on CNN and several Canadian TV
shows, as well as putting in an apperance on National Public Radio's
"Talk of the Nation" show in early January.

Not once was it ever mentioned in any of the New Republic or New York
Times stories how a lone and determined blogger
in Taiwan -- who never believed for one second that cockamamie story
of a blind date and apples over a concentration camp fence -- brought
the news of this literary hoax to the attention of the world media,
hand-delivered it
to a hesitant reporter in New York and helped stop a book in its
tracks before it could get
out of the starting gate.

How do I know all this? I was that blogger

And you expect us to believe that?

That's a joke, by the way. However, readers of Dan Bloom's contributions on MoH may get the impression that he was the first to identify the hoax. Scrolling down the Jossip page, I see (reply no. 21) that Peter Kubicek appears to have been the first person to expose this piece of fakery, and that he was backed up by Dr Deborah Lipstadt. Kubicek contacted a reporter (whose name has been withheld) at the New York Times, who did not run the story - but who could have discussed it with others. And in reply no. 15 Mr Bloom mentions a string of researchers who 'proved it was a hoax', though he gives only their first names.

Here we go again.....Nobody ever believes me when i tell the truth...story of my life..... SMILE

let me explain to above comments:

1. Hi Mr Henderson. I do expect you to believe this because it's the truth. Why would I make it up. That very same commentary will soon appear as an Oped piece in the New York Times. Will you believe me then? Okay, I can wait. Patience is my middle name. {And it's good to be skeptical, so I don't mind you being skeptical about what I wrote above, but it's the God's honest truth....really....you will see later....)

2. I will answer Mr Henderson 2nd comment with CAPS as comments: "That's a joke, by the way. However, readers of Dan Bloom's contributions on MoH may get the impression that he was the first to identify the hoax. I WAS THE FIRST TO IDENTIFY THE BOOK, repeat, THE BOOK TO BE PUBLISHED and the CHILDREN'S BOOK already PUBLISHED, as based on a HOAX. PETER AND DEBOORAH DID NOT EVEN KNOW THERE WAS A KIDS BOOK OR A MEMOIR COMING OUT. THE BOOK IS ALL I WAS WORRIED ABOUT. THE BOOKS. YES, PETER AND DEBORAH AND KEN WALATER HAD BEEN INVESTGARING THE CHAIN LETTER EMAIL CARRYKNG HERMAN'S BACKSTORY FOR A YEAR, SINCE DEC. 7, 2007, when DEB first POSTED ABOUT THE EMAIL, repeat, the EMAIL, on her blog. BUT YES, OF COURSE I OWE ALL MY BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE ABOUT HE HOLOLCUST CAMP AND MAP DETAILS TO THE GREAT RESEARCH DOWN WAY BEFORE I GOT ON BOARD< yes, FULly ackjnowledge this, but they were investing the Oprah show appeances and the chain email making the rounds and teh CHIKCKE SOUP FO ROANITC COUPLES THAT HAD THE HERMAN STORY < 4 pages in it. I CAME ABOARD THIS TrAIN ON OCTOBER 12 to debunk tHE BOOK, not the email or the Oprah show stuff. they were alreayd doing that,a nd very well,a dn I worked with them to help me pin down the book take down. YES. WE WERE A TEAM. I WAS ONLY INTERESTING IN THE MEMOIR, the 30 page memoir to be pubolsued in Feb. PETER AND DEB ANBD KEN DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS UNTIL I TOLD THEM IN EMAILS IN LATE OCTOVER< EARLY NOBEMBNER. I HAVE THE EMAISL TO PROVE IT IN MY FILEs> YES PETER WENT TO THE NEW YORJK TIMES REPROTER JOS BNERGER IN AUGUST 2008, yes he did, BUT PETER WAS PRESENING THE TIMES WITH DAMNING INFO ABOUT THE CHIAN EMAILS AND OPRAH SHOW APPAREACNESA NOT HE BOOK. MY ONLY ROLE WAS IN EXPOSING THE PUBLISHIGN OF THE MEMOIR AND CHILDREN S BOOK. AND...I do not wany any credit for this, Mr H....I was only searching for truth, about the BLIND DATE mostly......and this was never about ME, danny bloom, i am nobody, this was about the Holocaust, and the truth, and the memories of those who died in the Hcaust and those who are still living as survivors. I did this for THEM, not for me. I am Jewishs myself, deeply, madly, dearly Jewish, but I am an atheist in my worldview, but I remain deeply attached to my roots. SO I DID ALL THIS OUT OF MY JEWISH ROOTS AND FOR THE HOLOCAUST DEAD, may they rest in peace, and for the survivors like PETER, who is NOW a very good friend of mine, and HE has written a very good memoir of his own, 114 pages, short, but very veyr powerful. and true. Nothing embelksiedh. I read it last month and cried. He sent it to me. SO I HOPE THAT ANSWERS SOME OF YOUR QUESTIONS AND THEY ARE GOOD QUESTIONS.......

Scrolling down the Jossip page, I see (reply no. 21) that Peter Kubicek appears to have been the first person to expose this piece of fakery, HE WAS EXPOSING THE CHAIN EMAIL AND CHICKEN SOUP AND OPEAH FAKERY, YES, and HE DESERVES HUGE KUDOS FOR THAT< HE IS A GREAT MAN, and a good friend of mine now. HE WENT TO THE TIMES ON HIS OWN, hE IS 78 and a Holcaosut survivor and he was worried, for good reaosn, that Herman's backstory as tiold jn chian emails and Oprah show and CHICHEKN SOUP and thousndas of blogs was NOT GOOD FOR THE TRUE HISTORY AND MEMORY OF THE HOLCAOUST, and GOD BLESS PETER FOR HIS PERSISTENT WORK ON THIS. I RELIED ON HIS ADVICE AND RESAEACH FOR MY BOOK TAKE DOWN WORK...YES, PETER IS AN ANGEL AND A SAINT....AGIAN THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME OR ANYONE...THIS Is ABOUT THE Truth...A GROUP OF UNRELATED PEOPLE WORKED ON ALL THEIR OWN WAYS TO STOP THIS CHAIN EMAAIL BULLSHIT AND THE BOOK. I ONLY WAS CONCENED TO STOP THE BOOK BECAUES I HAVE A LONG BACKGREOUND IN THE PUBLISHIGN INDSUTRY AND I WAS TREYING TO WARN THE PUBLISHING INDSUITRY ABOUT HERMANS BOOK, THATS ALL. I am NOT AN EXPERT ON THE HOLCOAUAST at all. I relied on the reserach by Ken and Deb and PEter to get my bearings on this. YEs. they deserve all the credit, if anyone deserves the credeit, especiually Ken and Peter.....BIG APPLAUSE YES./...

and that he was backed up by Dr Deborah Lipstadt. SHE WAS ALSO ONLY LOOKING INTO THE CHAIN EMAIL AND BLOGS AND IOPRAH SHOW STUFF AT FIRST< NOT THE MEMOIR TO BE PUBLISHED , UNTIL I GOT ON HER CASE.......REALLY, ASK HER......

Kubicek contacted a reporter ...[JOSEPH BERGER A VERY GOOD REPORTER BY THE WAY, HE WAS A DP AFTER THE WAR, displaced person......also Jewish, lost relatives in the Holocaust too...] (whose name has been withheld) at the New York Times, who did not run the story - but who could have discussed it with others. HE DID DISCUSS IT WITH OTHERS AT THE TIMES AND WITH DEB AND HE EVEN INTERVIEWED HERMAN AND WHEN I ASKED JOE IF HE WOULD DO A A STORY , this was in early December, HE SAID TO ME: "I have talked to Herman and while I believe he did embellish his tale a little bit, I think that bascially his BOOK will hold up to scrutiny , but i am still mulling this over after taking notes on this story for over a year." A YEAR!

in reply no. 15 Mr Bloom mentions a string of researchers who 'proved it was a hoax', though he gives only their first names. STRING and tthe real heroes of the research team:

THe deep researchers and heroes of this project:

Kenneth Waltzer, PHD
Deborah Lipstadt, PHD
Peter Kubicek, retired businessman, survivor
Sharon Sargeant, forensic expert
Colleen Fitzgerald, forensic expert
amateur Schlieben historian Uwe Schwarz
his associate Jean-Luis Rey
Ben Helfgott, survivor, UK Olympian, 1950s
Sidney Finkel, survivor, friend of Herman's
Gabe Sherman, New Republic reporter
[*Danny Bloom, ''waterboy''[ to the media]


[Identifinders (google them) 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.

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.]

So just to sum up: I was NOT the first to identify the hoax. Deborah Lipstadt was the first to blog about the hoax chain email on December 7, 2007.

http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/2007/12/apples-over-fence-holocaust-story-that.html

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Apples over the Fence: A Holocaust story that beggars the imagination

There is a Holocaust story making the rounds on the Internet which is clearly not true. It's about an inmate of a camp [a sub-camp of Buchenwald] who connects with a young girl outside the camp. She throws him an apple everyday over the fence. He tells her one day in May 1945 that she should not throw any more apples because at 10 a.m. the next morning he has appointment to appear at the gas chamber to be killed. This story has so many shortcomings that one hardly knows where to begin.

Nota bene:

**** My only minor contribution to the book cancellation was to work tirelessly for 10 weeks or since October 10 to bring the news of the upcoming memoir to be published, and of the kids book already published, to the attention of the mainstream media in order to shine a spotlight on the alleged hoax.....but I could not find one person in the MSM to take me seriously for a long two months until...I found Gabriel Sherman's email address online, [after searching for a reporter who knew something about literary hoaxes, and from his earlier work at Slate in reporting on the Ishamel Beah child soldier book stuff] and I called Gabe up and spent three days trying to convince him that I had the names, addresses, tel numbers and email addresses of an expert team of researchers who could confirm everything I was telling him -- because I got all the information direcetly from them, of course -- and Gabe did not believe me for the first two days of my pestering him with this....but on my third midnight phone call, and after 50 emails with details details details, he finally "believed" me. And he took over from there. That is all I did. A mere waterboy to the press, an errand boy. A nobody.

Convinced now?

From my understanding, Dan Bloom has offered insights that our actions and deeds can be watched and disputed. If you are doing noble deeds they will not be contested, yet if you plant seeds that are questionable, questions will arise to uncover the truth.The truth does set one free. And there is less clean up afterward

Mimi said...

Having read with interest the various comments posted by Danny in his
efforts to find the truth in the story - as well as the people who
criticized him for doing so, it occurred to me - isn't the basis of
the blogosphere sphere that people of all walks of life try to get to the
bottom of the news in the best way that they can, unfiltered by the
biases and limitations of the MSM and the rest of us are free to judge
the results based on our own best abilities? (Yes, I know that was a
ridiculously run-on sentence, oh well.) So it seems to me that this is
exactly what Dan did, to the benefit of all of us, as, in fact, the
story he so strived to investigate did, in fact, turn out to be
untrue. So we owe him (and the others who did so) a vote of thanks for
continuing one of the most valuable purposes of the blogosphere. And
if it was done so clumsily, then go back to the mainstream media where
the 'facts' are reported in a smooth and professional manner - until
they are shown to be biased, incomplete and untrue. So, thanks Dan,
you aren't (in your words) a 'nobody', but rather a valued member of
the truth seeking blogosphere. And who am I to say so? Well, just a
'nobody' too. If that matters.

dan replied to mimi, above, :


Mimi, thank you for that. You are the first and only person who has
taken the time to say thanks.

I thank you for understanding what this nobody was trying to do: take
down two books based on lies. It took me 10 weeks of 24/7 Internet
doggedness, yes, and with the support of many people on this very
blog, who fed me "tips" and "quotes" that blew the lid off this
Pandora Box of a story...

And you are right, Mimi, this was an Internet, citizen journalists,
blogging 101 crash course in "uncovering the truth". It would never
have found success without the blogosphere. And my trusty email
account at Gmail, which I sometimes refer to as Gefilte [Fish] Mail.

Thanks, Mimi. You said it right. It was not me, it was us, the
blogosphere, who nailed this story.

GET READY, IT IS GETTING WEIRDER:

....there is one thing i think you 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. Why Dave will not listen to me on this, I don't know, and why Sara Nelson at PW will not listen to me on this I don't know, and why the NYTimes will not listen to me on this I don't know. 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.

"my wife ... asked why people like the Rosenblats don't simply publish their stories as fiction. After all, no one is denying that they're good stories and might make a great book."

Alex,
Tell your wife, when I write a 'great book' with some 'good stories' about her, making lots of false claims, she will change her mind.
Even when I disguise my claims as 'fiction' she still will consider 'my cheap trick' as disparaging.

The Germans surely don't consider all the debunked lies about concentration camps as 'good stories'. Or does your wife think, every trash can be heaped on the Germans, but not on her ?

Roberto E. Varela
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

RE: eovti in Sandefjord, Norway
".. is just like throwing gasoline on the fire for "historians" like David Irving."

Whow, eovti! Nice logic!
The 'chosen' brazenly lie and when they get caught red handed, both hands in the sack, your only problem is anti-semitism and bashing David Irving.

This whole thread misses completely the essential point:

Silly stories of little girls running around with wolves, apples thrown over camp fences, and other naive trash fantasies of senile oldies would normally never have gotten any attention at all, neither as fictions nor as pretended reality.

It is only the magic label 'Holocaust Inside' which opens all doors, from Oprah to Hollywood to worldwide translation, to medals and prices.

Since the 'Holocaust' is not based on hard scientific facts, they need those faked 'memories' to push it down our throats on a daily basis.

After the war, this was easy: the 'survivers' could invent whatever they wanted, Germans who objected were hanged.
Nowadays, things have changed a bit. Not so much in western 'democracies', but fortunately we have the internet and Taiwanese bloggers to save us from dying stupid ... (:-))


Roberto E. Varela
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

How 'citizen journalism' blogs helped uncovered a Holocaust hoax in the US publishing industry

TAIPEI -- 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

Comments: Page 1 of 2 pages  1 2 >