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The Angel at the Fence
Paperback
Main Details
| Title |
The Angel at the Fence
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| Authors and Contributors |
By (author) Herman Rosenblat
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| Physical Properties |
| Format:Paperback | | Pages:320 | | Dimensions(mm): Height 234,Width 153 |
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| Category/Genre | Biographies:General
The Holocaust |
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| ISBN/Barcode |
9780007307241
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| Classifications | Dewey:940.5318092 |
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| Audience | |
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| Illustrations |
16 col plates (8pp)
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Publishing Details |
| Publisher |
HarperCollins Publishers
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| Imprint |
Harper Thorsons
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| Publication Date |
5 February 2009 |
| Publication Country |
United Kingdom
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Description
Herman Rosenblat was just 11 years old when German soldiers rounded up his family during a raid on a Jewish ghetto in Poland. Sent to Buchenwald, Herman was put to work in the crematorium, shovelling dead bodies into the furnace, trying to survive in a world of hunger, fear and death. One day, walking by the fence, he saw a small girl on the other side. She smiled at him, and when he asked desperately if she had any food, she pulled an apple out of her pocket and threw it over the fence. As he ran off, afraid of being caught and shot, he heard her whisper "come back tomorrow." For six months, they met every day. She threw him an apple or a hunk of bread. They never spoke, but the warmth of her smile and the food she gave him kept him alive and convinced him that she was an angel, sent to him by his mother. Herman was moved to another camp, and then eventually freed by Russian troops. He moved to England and then to New York. Fifteen years later, in 1957, Herman was set up on a blind date by a friend. Roma charmed him from the start with her warmth and beauty.It was only towards the end of their date that Herman touched on their shared history and asked her gently how she had survived the Holocaust. Roma explained that her family had bought forged papers to hide the fact that they were Jewish, and that they'd lived quietly on a farm next to a camp. She said that she had thrown apples over to fence to a starving young boy every day until he'd told her one day that he was being moved and not to come again. She'd always prayed that he had survived!
Author Biography
By Herman Rosenblat
ReviewsKirkus Review US:A survivor's memoir of the Shoah.Rosenblat's family, like the other Polish Jews, had tried to flee during the late 1930s, but they did not manage to escape the tightening circles of Nazi oppression. His father died of typhus in May 1942. Five months later, all the Jews in their ghetto were ordered to report for deportation in the middle of the night. Thirteen-year-old Herman claimed to be 16 and was selected for slave labor with his three older brothers. Their mother was sent directly to the death camp at Treblinka. She pushed Herman away when he begged to go with her, pretending to be angry so he would join his brothers. Only later, when he marched away and saw tears streaming down her face, did he realize what she had done. The Rosenblat brothers endured at Buchenwald and Theresienstadt. Remembered six decades later, their story is still vibrant and vivid. The author recalls his sleeping dreams and the waking nightmare of real life in a concentration camp. Though there are many astonishing twists in his narrative, there is none more remarkable than the tale of Rosenblat's first two encounters with the young woman who became his wife - after they went on a blind date nine years later in Coney Island. (The young survivor had made his way to New York after being transported to England.) The author's personal history attests to his recovery from a scarifying confrontation with systematic evil and murder on a cosmic scale. He leaves it to the reader to decide what his wartime experiences meant, then and now.Simple, unpretentious prose makes Rosenblat's memoir all the more potent. (Kirkus Reviews)
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