A "Corny" Con

We've been had, those of us who passed around, read and got emotional, because of that moving Holocaust story of the young boy who who was given apples by a girl when he was imprisoned by the Nazis, and then, too amazing to be true, but the accompanying note said that it was, ended up meeting the woman after the war and marrying her.


This was considered a great story, and he was asked to expand his memoirs into a book. So he did.

Here's the Epilogue:

NEW YORK – The publisher of a disputed Holocaust memoir has canceled the book, adding the name Herman Rosenblat to an increasingly long line of literary fakers and bringing down with a crash his story — embraced by Oprah Winfrey, among others — of meeting his future wife at a Nazi concentration camp.
Rosenblat's "Angel at the Fence" had been scheduled to come out in February, but Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), withdrew the memoir Saturday following allegations by scholars, friends and family members that his tale was untrue.
"Berkley Books is canceling publication of Angel at the Fence after receiving new information from Herman Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst," the publisher said in a statement. "Berkley will demand that the author and the agent return all money that they have received for this work." (complete article)

It fits a holiday period in which we learned from Bernie Madoff that if things seem too good to be true, they probably aren't. At least passing around an email didn't cost us money.

And I still insist that I'm more a pragmatist than a cynic when I say that the Olmert-Livni-Barak Troika's latest war is just a campaign gimmick, a very dangerous and deadly one.