"Angel Girl": Love Story Born In Holocaust

(CBS)  In June of 1958, Herman and Roma Rosenblat were married.

They'd met six months earlier on a blind date at New York's Coney Island.

But, reports CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella, this was and is no ordinary love story. Fate played a large role in bringing them together -- and they just celebrated their 50th anniversary.

It all began 65 years ago, in Nazi Germany.

"I went with my brothers to the right. My mother went to the left," Herman recalled. "We got separated from my mother, and she was taken to Treblinka, to the gas chamber."

Herman was sent to a slave labor camp in Germany, called Schlieben.

His mother was always in his dreams. And in one, she promised to send him an angel.

Life at Schlieben was unbearable, a diet of bread and water, his world defined by barbed wire and watchtowers.

Until, he says, "I saw a little girl behind a tree, on the other side of the barbed wire."

It was Roma, just eight years old, her Jewish family posing as Christians to hide from the Nazis.

"She took out an apple out of her jacket and she threw it over the fence. I grabbed the apple, and I ran," Herman says.

Every day, Roma came to that tree with food for Herman.

He called her his "Angel Girl."

"We never spoke a word to each other. Never," Herman says. "Never spoke a word to each other. Because, if the guards would see me from the tower, I could have gotten shot. And she could have gotten shot."

This unspoken relationship lasted seven months until one day, without warning, Herman was transferred by coal car to another camp. He said goodbye to his angel.

"That was it. I never saw her since then," Herman says.

After the concentration camps were liberated, Herman found his way to the United States.

"He found love and was engaged to be married three times, but never went through with any of them. He always felt something was missing.

And then came that blind date -- with Roma. As they spoke, Herman told her of the little girl who'd thrown him apples when he was in the concentration camp. And she said she was that girl!

It was a coincidence Herman believes was no accident.

"I said to myself, 'Oh my God -- my mother sent her back to me!' And that was it. I knew right then and there we were going to get married."

"He was tall and handsome," Roma told Cobiella.

"I'm still handsome!" Herman chuckled.

"Yes, you are. You are. You are," Roma responded.

Six months after that blind date -- 15 years after Roma first threw the apple -- they were married.

"Every morning," Herman advised, "every morning for years, you get up you wake up you look at each other, and you say. 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' You kiss, and you say, 'Now, let's go for breakfast.' "

And Roma leaned over and kissed Herman again.

Herman says their story is being made into a movie, and he wants Dustin Hoffman to play him.

The story has already been made into a children's book, "Angel Girl," by Laurie B. Friedman. To see an excerpt, click here.

[dannybloom1]

3.

really. i hope their story is true. But you should know you MAY have been taken in......it is not a LIE, but it might be a family fib that just grew and grew....this is often happens....check it out before you report again....

[dannybloom1]

Why? Because it is turns out that this "backstory" is not really TRUE, whatever that means today, then the book he is writing and the movie he hopes to see made, will be called into question. The kids book that is out now was written by a third part, and says on the cover "based on a true story" , and not "a true story" , just based on what the author was told was a true story, and both AP and CBS have now also joined the chorus saying the backstory is true, and it might be, but you really need to do more research. For starters, go to snopes website. Or google my questioning article online via GOOGLE NEWS that is headlined: "Oprah: Truth and consequences"

[dannybloom1]

Kelly Cobiella,
This was a great story, and AP reported it a few days earlier as you know, and the couple first went on Oprah show in 1996, but are you or your producers aware that some people, some observers, are not quite sure that Herman''s backstory of apples and the fence and meeting Roma again, that she was the same girl, that is is exactly a true story or not? Some people doubt this, at some websites deovting to urban legends and Holocaust stories. Before you report more on this loving and lovely couple, you and your producers should really vet the BACKstory, about the apples and the fence and meeting again.

[diachokdn]

Beautiful story. But ....

May I suggest an antidote to the American public''s perceived "Holocaust fatigue" (not my term)? Do occasional stories of Christians who risked their lives to save our "Religeous older brothers," using Pope John Paul''s term. Wouldn''t that improve relations? My mother, my uncle, our roomers upstairs in Washington DC-- all risked their lives to save their neighbors. You never see a story like theirs. My mother was shot at by a German guard after smuggling inmates pototoes. Mrs. Bachins''ka, who lived upstairs, was imprisoned and awaiting execution for sheltering Jews when her family bought her out with literally the family jewels.

There are many thousands of stories like theirs.

[diachokdn]

Beautiful story. But ....

May I suggest an antidote to the American public''s perceived "Holocaust fatigue" (not my term)? Do occasional stories of Christians who risked their lives to save our "Religeous older brothers," using Pope John Paul''s term. Wouldn''t that improve relations? My mother, my uncle, our roomers upstairs in Washington DC-- all risked their lives to save their neighbors. You never see a story like theirs. My mother was shot at by a German guard after smuggling inmates pototoes. Mrs. Bachins''ka, who lived upstairs, was imprisoned and awaiting execution for sheltering Jews when her family bought her out with literally the family jewels.

There are many thousands of stories like theirs.

[hbevis]

This story tears at your heart. What are the odds of something like this happening.???

May they live in peace form now on..

[dburfears]

Kindness and love in the face of great evil.