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The tale of Herman and Roma Rosenblat had all the elements of a terrific Hollywood story: A demonstration of man's indomitable will to survive even in the most horrific of conditions, the reaffirmation of man's essential goodness as exemplified by a simple act of kindness and humanity in the face of monstrous evil, and the miraculous reuniting of lovers separated by vast distances of time and space. It's a sure bet that if the planned film of their story, The Flower of the Fence, ever sees the light of day, it will send many a movie-goer departing theaters with tear-stained cheeks. But there's one question the Rosenblats' tale left most everyone asking: Is it a true story? Certainly Herman and Roma Rosenblat are real people (the former a concentration camp survivor), and they related their amazing life stories in many interviews and television appearances. But there was no independent confirmatory evidence for the details of their story: There were no witnesses who saw or knew of Herman and Roma's exchange of apples at the concentration camp, and no relatives or acquaintances who could attest that Herman or Rosa told them about their experiences prior to the couple's reunion in the late 1950s. Herman himself stated that he never mentioned a word [about the girl who was giving him apples] to anyone else for fear word would spread and he'd be punished or even killed, and the couple acknowledged that even after their engagement, [they] kept the story mostly to themselves. It was not until the 1990s that the Rosenblats began to publicly share their story: The lack of firm evidence kept many a critic busy attempting to poke holes in the Rosenblats' story. Some criticisms of the Rosenblats' account didn't rise much above the level of nit-picking, given that human memory is fallible and even the best of us can misremember details in attempting to recall events that took place decades earlier. (Moreover, some of the supposed errors in the text are actually mistaken assumptions on the part of critics, such as incorrectly equating crematorium with gas chamber.) Other criticisms were based on more scholarly evidence, however, as in the following example: Herman Rosenblat initially defended his memoir against such criticisms, stating through his publisher that: In late December 2008, however, Berkley Books withdrew plans to publish Herman Rosenblat's memoir, Angel at the Fence, due to concerns that his tale was a fabricated one. Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst, acknowledged her client had revealed to her that a key portion of his story was false: The New York Daily News reported shortly afterward that: As far as we know, production of the film adaptation of Rosenblat's memoir is still slated to continue.
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