reSee.it Video Transcript AI Summary
Herman Rosenblatt told an extraordinary story of survival in Nazi concentration camps, including a renowned tale of being a hungry boy who was fed apples daily by a girl beyond the fence, and later meeting and proposing to her in New York. This narrative, which brought Herman and his wife Roma Rosenblatt wide attention—Oprah appearances, international headlines, a book deal, and a movie deal—turned out not to be true. Herman insisted during the interview that it was not a lie but imagination: “in my imagination, in my mind, I believed it… I believed it that she was there, and she threw the apple to me.” He maintained that the story was important to give people hope and to promote understanding about the Holocaust.
Herman’s son disputed the motivation, claiming money was a factor and that his father lied for years. He said, “My father is a man who I don’t know,” and that his father knew he was lying. Herman rejected the charge of financial motive, saying he was not motivated by money, though the interview indicated his family’s skepticism about his intentions.
The couple publicly promoted the story for more than a decade until Holocaust scholars recently proved it was physically impossible for prisoners to approach the fence at the camp where Herman was kept, and Roma’s family was actually more than 200 miles away at the time. When asked why Roma agreed to participate, Herman replied that she loves him and that if she thinks something is good for him, she’ll go along with it; she has not appeared on the show because “she’s too much going on.”
Roma’s participation was difficult for her as well; she acknowledged it was challenging for her to tell a story she knew wasn’t true, but she did it out of love for Herman. Herman remained unapologetic about the years of deception, saying, “I pronounce my love for you forever,” and that he would tell the same story again if given the chance. He expressed that he is sorry people took the story the wrong way, although he did not retract the core claim that it was a fantasy world he lived in.
The controversy affected a nonfiction memoir deal, which fell through, while a fictionalized book and a movie adaptation—produced or planned by Harris Solomon—were in progress, with shooting anticipated in Eastern Europe. Critics and Holocaust-denier websites were using the case to argue against the credibility of survivors, though Herman asserted the work was done with good intentions and that the public should know what he did in his imagination.