Local survivor publishes novel
LEISAH NAMM
Managing Editor
"I am Percy Arrowsmith AKA Peretz Abramovici" (Publish America, $12.95 paperback) is the title of a new novella based on true events of Jewish life in Romania during World War II, written by George Lastnick, a Phoenix resident of 35 years.
Lastnick was born in Romania in 1926 and mixes his own experiences with stories he's heard from others to create the life of fictional character Percy Arrowsmith. The book is written in first-person, from the point of Arrowsmith. Lastnick, who was in a labor camp from 1941-1944, chose to write it in this matter because he finds autobiography to be very personal, and therefore limited. Also, "I don't think that my autobiography is so exciting," he says.
For privacy and legal reasons, he has chang-ed names, locations, ages of actual people and events, but says at least 90 percent of what he wrote about really happened.
"Mostly this story tries to show the suffering and martyrdom of the Romanian Jewry during one of the darkest periods of their existence," according to the book's back cover. "It is also a small tribute to the 300,000 of them who were not fortunate enough to escape their terrible fate and who were slaughtered during the Holocaust."
Lastnick emigrated to Chicago in 1965, and moved to Phoenix in 1969. He practiced medicine until he retired in 2001 and started writing "I am Percy Arrowsmith" soon after his retirement.
He and his wife Simona have one daughter, Denise, and he recently finished "Code Name Agamemnon," another World War II novel. Lastnick is a member of the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association.
The book can be obtained at Israel Connection, 5539 N. Seventh Ave., Phoenix; Valley Barnes and Noble bookstores; and Borders Bookstore at Biltmore Fashion Park, 2402 E. Camelback Road, Phoenix.
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