20 Facts About Herman Rosenblat

The story behind Herman Rosenblat's story is being developed as an independent feature film.

In June 2010 Atlantic Overseas Pictures and producer Harris Salomon signed a co-production agreement with Castel Film Studios, a well known studio in Central and Eastern Europe and the studio for Cold Mountain and Borat as well as 3rd-i films in London, to produce a feature film about the Herman Rosenblat affair based on an original screenplay by award-winning screenwriter Ivo Marloh entitled The Apple, scheduled for production in 2015.

Two years later, when Herman Rosenblat was 12 years old, his mother was separated from him and put on a Holocaust train to Treblinka extermination camp during one of the ghetto liquidation actions.

Herman Rosenblat later wrote that he lied to the Germans about his age because the Nazis used older boys for slave labor, and sent younger ones for extermination.

Herman Rosenblat claimed in his memoir that his future wife Roma, a nine-year-old Jewish girl hiding in the town of Schlieben with her family, threw him apples and bread over the electrified, guarded fence of the camp on a daily basis throughout the seven months' period.

Herman Rosenblat says he lived in London for four years, where he learned the electrical trade at the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training school.

Herman Rosenblat then moved to the United States in 1950 and was drafted into the United States Army in 1951.

Herman Rosenblat met Roma Radzicki in the United States on a blind date in 1957, and married her.

Herman Rosenblat later claimed that during the date he had recognized her as the girl who threw apples to him over the fence and proposed on the spot.

Herman Rosenblat stated that his mother had appeared to him at the hospital and had told him to tell his story to the world.

In 1994 Herman Rosenblat had a tax lien placed on him by the IRS for unpaid payroll taxes dating back to 1988, which must have increased the financial pressure on him.

Herman Rosenblat told the apple story for the first time in late 1995, and he won Winfrey's contest in 1996.

Herman Rosenblat found out that the prisoners of that concentration camp were prohibited from approaching a camp's fence on pain of death, nor was anyone allowed to approach a fence from the outside.

Herman Rosenblat stated that the apple-tossing part of his backstory was something he only imagined, while stating that the rest of his Holocaust experiences were accurate, however other falsehoods and discrepancies in his remaining story have been discovered since then.

Herman Rosenblat's family knew about the hoax and tried to convince Rosenblat not to tell it.

Herman Rosenblat's last surviving brother, Sam, had hesitated talking to him and he died in 2007.

Salomon has asked Herman Rosenblat to donate all the earnings of the film to Holocaust survivor charities but Herman Rosenblat refused.

The video features Herman Rosenblat describing and re-enacting his Holocaust love story for the producers of the film adaptation of his book, specifically the throwing of apples over the perimeter fence of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, long after that part of his story had been discredited as fake.

Waltzer and others have said that Herman Rosenblat did not need to embellish his story, which was already powerful enough by itself.

Deborah Lipstadt and others have harshly criticized Herman Rosenblat for embellishing his story, since this could cause people to doubt the truth of the Holocaust, and encourage Holocaust deniers.