About the Museum of Hoaxes
The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about whatever dubious-sounding claims come across our path on a day-by-day basis. In our archives we have hundreds of articles about the most fascinating and notorious deceptions throughout history, from the middle ages to the present.
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The Apple
Status: Fake memoir rebranded as fiction
A few months ago it was revealed that Herman Rosenblat had invented his story about how he met his wife while he was imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, and she was a young girl from the nearby village who would give him apples through the fence. The revelation caused his book deal to be canceled. But Gawker reports that York House Press is now turning his tale into a book anyway... they're just clearly labeling it as fiction. And they paid someone else to write it.
I think I understand York House Press' reasoning. They must have been impressed by how people like Oprah called Rosenblat's story the greatest love story ever told, and they figured that even though it's fake, it's still a great story. Thus the decision to put it out as a novel. The problem is, it was only a great story because people thought it was real. Once it's exposed as a fraud, it's no longer a great story. It then becomes a manipulative and exploitative story.