Guest Post: Jerry Amernic, Author of The Last Witness
Synopsis: The Last Witness - Jerry Amernic - October 2014
The year is 2039, and
Jack Fisher is the last living survivor of the Holocaust. Set in a world
that is abysmally complacent about events of the last century, Jack is a
100-year-old man whose worst memories took place before he was 5. His
story hearkens back to the Jewish ghetto of his birth and to Auschwitz
where, as a little boy, he had to fend for himself to survive after
losing his family. Jack becomes the central figure in a missing-person
investigation when his granddaughter suddenly disappears. While
assisting police, he finds himself in danger and must reach into the
darkest corners of his memory to come out alive.
Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23573053-the-last-witness?from_search=true
Guest Post on why I
wrote about the Holocaust by Jerry Amernic for Paula at The Phantom
Paragrapher.
Why did I choose to write a novel about the
Holocaust and why set it in the future? I have long been fascinated and
horrified with the Holocaust, the greatest human tragedy, the greatest mass
murder, in history – a singular event from which came the word genocide. The fact that a country like
Germany, one of the most modern and industrialized nations on earth, could
perpetrate something so horrible, so beyond imagination, has gnawed away at my
brain for years.
Alas, one day in the not-too-distant future there
will be one last living survivor. Let’s say this person was a male born in
1939, which makes him a child survivor.
He was born in the Jewish ghetto of Lodz, the second largest city in Poland,
and as a Jew he was a hidden child or the Nazis would have taken him. But when
his family is discovered living in the sewers below the old city, the entire
group is whisked away to the death camp. Auschwitz.
In the year 2039 this man would be observing his 100th
birthday, and that is how my story begins.
The Last Witness is a novel about the last living
survivor one generation down the road. But what will the world be like then? If
it’s anything like today, and current trends continue, I must assume that the
overall level of knowledge about the Holocaust will be less than it is now. It
will be a world that is woefully ignorant and complacent about events from the
previous century.
This then is what befalls my central character Jack
Fisher, who lives in a New York seniors’ residence, when he gets involved in a
missing-person investigation concerning the sudden disappearance of his
great-granddaughter, a schoolteacher in Canada. Running in tandem with that
near-future story line are flashbacks about the young Jack as a little boy in
the Jewish ghetto and later in Auschwitz, and how he managed to survive.
It’s readily apparent that anything written about
the last survivor of the Holocaust has to be set in the future, although not
far off. I should add that not one real-life child survivor whom I interviewed
in my research – and there were many – considered my premise about ignorance of
the Holocaust a stretch. And just to illustrate how sad the current state is of
Holocaust knowledge and knowledge about World War II, I produced a video where
we asked university students some very basic questions. You can see the results
for yourself.
The Last Witness is a thriller, albeit a historical
thriller. And while I hope it engages the reader, I also hope it leaves that
reader with a message.
The Last Witness on
Amazon:
http://amzn.to/14jlgXQ
Author
Bio:
Jerry Amernic is a Toronto writer who has been a
newspaper reporter and correspondent, newspaper columnist, feature contributor
for magazines, and media consultant. He has taught writing and journalism at
college, and is the author of several books.
His first book was Victims: The Orphans of Justice, a true story about a former police
officer whose daughter was murdered. The man became a leading advocate for
victims of crime. Jerry later wrote a column on the criminal justice system for
The Toronto Sun, and has since been a contributor to many other newspapers. In
2007 he co-authored Duty – The Life of a
Cop with Julian Fantino, the highest-profile police officer Canada has ever
produced and currently a member of the country’s federal Cabinet.
Jerry’s first novel Gift of the Bambino (St. Martin’s Press, 2004) was widely praised
by the likes of The Wall Street Journal in the U.S., and The Globe and Mail in
Canada. His latest novel is the historical thriller The Last Witness, which is set in the year 2039 and is about the
last living survivor of the Holocaust. The biblical-historical thriller Qumran will be released next. It’s about
an archeologist who makes a dramatic discovery in the Holy Land.
Jerry’s Website: http://thelastwitness.ca/
Jerry’s Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1DuRSdn
Jerry’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jerryamernic
Jerry’s Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1312217.Jerry_Amernic
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