Herman Rosenblat's Angel at the Fence has been withdrawn by its publisher, Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin, following allegations by scholars, relatives and fellow survivors about its veracity.
Although records confirm that Rosenblat, a retired television repairman now living in Miami, was a child prisoner in several Nazi concentration camps, critics questioned his account of how he was befriended by a Jewish girl – living in secret with a Christian family – who, for months, threw him apples and bread over the fence at a sub-camp of Buchenwald.
Years later, Rosenblat claimed he met a young Polish immigrant, Roma Radzicky, on a blind date in New York and she turned out to be the same girl. They married in 1958 and have been together ever since.
But historians pointed out that it would have been physically impossible for prisoners to make contact with outsiders at the Schlieben camp, except for a spot right beside an SS barracks.