It could have happened here as it has happened in many other places at different times.  But this time it was different.  Herman Rosenblat wrote a memoir of his experiences from what he remembered of his earliest years to what he can never forget, his incarceration with his family for the crime of being a Jew. 

I have just finished reading “Uncorrected proofs for limited distribution – not for sale”, his story, Angel at the Fence.  This book will appear in hardcover in February 2009. Herman gave me this copy and I have read it in two days.  I took on the responsibility, due to its being “uncorrected” to look for problems in the writing.  I was impressed by the clarity of writing and found only one mistake in the use of a word on page 9 of Chapter One.

Herman chronicles his life as a happy child in pre-war Poland (despite the rampant anti-Semitism he experienced there) as the youngest in a large family with older brothers who cared fro him during their days of imprisonment and work. His safe and secure life was changed when Germany under Hitler began its conquest of Poland. There are few words that can adequately describe this memory of World War II in Europe locked tight by the German military who were assigned the duty to make not only Germany, but Europe, “Judenfrei”.  Herman’s story is his loss of identity which was replaced by a number and he became one of the slave laborers captured and treated like animals by the Nazi conquerors. 

This book is by a man who did not really learn to read and write until he was nearly an adult. It must be described as – powerful.  His yearning for his mother is a constant preoccupation and to this day he says he dreams of her and she answers him. He witnessed the destruction of lives all around him in years when he should have been learning in school. The complicity the Nazis forced on prisoners in “governing” themselves is told as he saw it happen. He, too, participated in cleaning up the human remains of Jews killed by rigid German rules that must be obeyed or that Jewish slave would be summarily killed.

Because Herman’s elder brothers protected him, he was saved many times.  One brother who had studied dentistry became a leader of the slave community and bargained for keeping their small group alive for just a little longer. He was the only “doctor” available to the sick and dying.

Throughout is the running thread of a relationship with a little girl on the other side of the ghetto’s fence who threw him food. After the war they were fortuitously reunited and this “Angel at the Fence” became his wife. They recently celebrated 50 years of marriage.  The two are members of Temple Sinai of North Dade where Herman studies Bible with us. He is also the author of a book for children explaining how he was saved from starvation by his ‘Angel at the Fence’.