cannot roll back a change

It appears that I cannot roll back (back out, strip) a certain change.
Specifically, a directory (with all its contents) has been removed and
then (in a separate commit) replaced with a symbolic link (complete with
the svn:special property).
I googled that and it appears that the official method is "svn merge
-rB:A" where A+1 is the change which removed the directory and B=A+2 is
the change which added the symlink. Alas, the above command does
nothing.
I manually removed the symlink and re-added the directory and files in
it, but it looks I lost their history (this would not have been the case
with cvs!).
So, what is the right way to roll back such a change?
Is there a way to save the history of the files in the restored
directory?
Thanks!

Linux 2.6.18-164.el5
CentOS release 5.3 (Final)
svn, version 1.6.6 (r40053)
   compiled Oct 22 2009, 08:33:25

-- 
Sam Steingold (http://sds.podval.org/) on CentOS release 5.3 (Final) X
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