Publication of disputed Holocaust memoir axed

Washington, Dec 28 (ANI): Berkley Books has cancelled the publication of a disputed Holocaust memoir, embraced by Oprah Winfrey and others.

The publisher, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), decided to cancel publication of "Angel at the Fencem which was scheduled to come out in February, after receiving new information about author Herman Rosenblat from his agnet.

Herman Rosenblat's story of meeting his future wife at a fence while he was at a Nazi concentration camp had been widely questioned by scholars, friends and family members who said his tale was untrue.

Records prove that Rosenblat was at the Buchenwald camp but scholars doubted his story, noting that the layout of the sub-camp made such an encounter at the fence virtually unthinkable (They would have met right by an SS barracks).

"Berkley Books is canceling publication of Angel at the Fence after receiving new information from Herman Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst. Berkley will demand that the author and the agent return all money that they have received for this work," CBS News quoted the publisher, as stating.

According to Rosenblat and his wife, he was a prisoner at a sub-camp of Buchenwald and she a young Jewish girl pretending to be Christian and living nearby.

For months, they claimed they would meet on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence.

Rosenblat was then transferred to another camp and the two lost touch, until the 1950s, when they were reunited by accident - on a blind date - in New York. They soon married and earlier this year celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.

The Rosenblats were interviewed twice over the years by Winfrey, who has called their romance "the single greatest love story ... we've ever told on the air."

They have inspired a children's book and a feature film adaptation is scheduled to begin next year. (ANI)