Arts & Entertainment

First Novel

Holocaust
Memorial Center
hosts local author
George Erdstein.

Robert Rockaway
Special to the Jewish News

I

n Mountain Rat (Publish America; $19.95), the first novel
by Holocaust Memorial Center docent George Erdstein of
Huntington Woods, it's the summer of 1957, a time when
America seemed relatively peaceful and safe. Phil Dechter, a
Columbia University premed student, finds work as a busboy
at a Catskill Mountains resort. What he thinks will be a boring,
uneventful way to earn money turns into a summer of
self-discovery and love.
Erdstein introduces the book 4 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 16, at a reading and book
signing at the HMC in Farmington Hills.
In the novel, Phil meets and interacts with the
resort's other "mountain rats:' a slang term for New
York Jewish college boys of modest means who work
as waiters or busboys in the Catskills. He also discov-
ers that his own waiter, an older man named Sam,
and many of the guests at this particular hotel are
refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe.
Phil also meets and falls in love with Laurie, a
counselor at a neighboring camp. Their relationship
becomes a key element in Phil's summer of self-dis-
covery.
On one of his walks, Phil encounters Marcel
Hauser, a hotel guest. During their conversation,
Phil learns that Hauser was a university student in
Czechoslovakia when the Nazis took over in 1938. He
and his two younger sisters were sent to Dachau. He
never saw his parents again, and both his sisters died,
one of typhus and the other by suicide after a guard
raped her.
At Dachau, Hauser met his future wife. Because of
what they experienced, he and his wife vowed that if
they survived, they would never bring children into
a world where human beings could commit such
atrocities.

Phil's growing awareness of what happened in Europe leads
him to confront his own personal, but weak, consciousness of
the Holocaust. Phil was born in Vienna and came as a child with
his parents to the United States shortly before the outbreak of
World War II. His parents rarely spoke of their experience, so Phil
grew up with only a vague knowledge of their past or what they
endured.
The story is fast-paced and written in a clear and vivid prose.
The dialogue is realistic, and the author does a wonderful job
of portraying the characters and evoking the sights, sounds and
even smells of the mountain resort.
But the book is more than just a story about Phil.
It is also a subtle indictment of the American Jewish
community's silence about the Holocaust. During the
1950s, Holocaust survivors rarely spoke about their suffering, and
American Jewry preferred to avoid the subject.
Only in the 1970s was the community willing to confront the
issue and educate the next generation as to what had occurred.
The author, a graduate of Columbia University's School of
Architecture, is Vienna-born and the child of refugees from Nazi
Austria. He grew up in New York City's Washington Heights in a
neighborhood shared by many refugees from the Holocaust.
This story thus contains elements of his own biography and
may explain why he is able to write with such feeling, compassion
and understanding. This is a book that not only moves its readers
but can educate them as well.

REV IEW

Meet The
Author

George Erdstein

120

DJN: What prompted you to write
Mountain Rat?
GE: I'm not a writer by trade, but
rather an architect by profession. Yet,
everyone has a story to tell. The time
and place I write about made a great
impression on me as a young man.
As I got older, it occurred to me that
it would make for a wonderful back-
ground for the weaving together of
some particular themes, one being the
subtle effects of the Holocaust on the
society of the time.

September 13 • 2007

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Robert Rockaway is a professor emeritus of Jewish history at Tel Aviv

University.

George Erdstein speaks about his novel Mountain Rat 4
p.m. Sunday, Sept.16, at the Holocaust Memorial Center
Zekelman Family Campus, 28123 Orchard Lake Road, in
Farmington Hills. Erdstein will sign all copies of Mountain
Rat purchased that day, with proceeds benefiting the
HMC. (248) 553-2400 or www.holocaustcenter.org .

With the judicious inclusion of humor
to help counterbalance unfathomable
tragedy, I thought the proper mix
could make for a meaningful story.

DJN: Is the Holocaust an important
part of your background?
GE: Very much so. I am a child of the
Holocaust but not so presumptuous
as to consider myself a survivor. Its
impact has taken on additional weight
over the years, and I've found it
important to help further the lessons
to be learned from it — one of the
reasons I volunteer as a docent at the
Holocaust Memorial Center.

DJN: Is your book autobiographical?
GE: Not really. But one writes about
what one knows. In this instance, I've
taken some meaningful experiences,
altered them and created others — all
hopefully resulting in a flowing narrative.
The same applies to the characters.

DJN: What would you hope the reader
gets out of the book?
GE: Most importantly, a good story.
Then, an understanding of a certain
time and place with all its failings and
perceptions. And — without giving
away the essence of the story — an
appreciation for the value of life in a
post-Holocaust era. I I