Professor Ken Waltzer, the director of Michigan State University's Jewish Studies program, said he began raising questions to the agent and publisher in November, suggesting that the story was fabricated. But he says his numerous queries went unanswered.
He says he told the editor that the story is "at best embellished and perhaps invented."
"The idea of a prisoner being able autonomously to approach the fence not just once, but every day at the same time, ... none of it seemed plausible," Waltzer says. "That fence was right next to the SS barracks, so to go to the fence, which was also punishable by death, was to risk death."
In a letter to "The New Republic," which first began questioning the validity of the Rosenblats' story, Waltzer said he was also disturbed about why few others had come forward to point out holes in the couple's account.