"
Survivors' testimonies, such as this, are essential in the understanding of what we so poorly call the Holocaust."
--Elie Wiesel
Eric Lamet was only seven years old when the Nazis invaded Vienna--and changed his life and the lives of all European Jews forever. Five days after Hitler marches, Eric Lamet and his parents flee for their lives. His father goes back to his native Poland--and never comes back. His mother hides out in Italy, on the run from place to place, taking her son deeper and deeper into the mountains to avoid capture.
In this remarkable feat of memory and imagination, Lamet recreates the Italy he knew from the perspective of the scared and lonely child he once was. We not only see the hardships and terrors faced by foreign Jews in Fascist Italy, but also the friends Eric makes and his mother's valiant efforts to make a home for him.
In a style as original as his story, the author vividly recalls a dark time yet imbues his recollections with humor, humanity, and wit. Very few Holocaust memoirs address the plight of Jews sent into internal exile in Mussolini's Italy. Lamet offers a rare and historically important portrait, one you will not soon forget.
Eric Lamet--nee Erich Lifshutz--was born in Vienna in 1930. The son of Polish Jews, he fled to Italy with his family after the Germans invaded Austria. After World War II ended, Lamet settled in Naples, where he finished high school and attended the University of Naples. In 1950 the family moved to the United States, and Lamet went to the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia. Fluent in German, Italian, English, Spanish, and Yiddish, Lamet served as an interpreter for the U.S. State Department, taught Italian for several years, and became a successful businessman. After retiring as CEO of his own firm in 1992, he returned to his great love: singing opera and Neapolitan songs. Lamet has three children, two stepchildren, and seven granddaughters. He lives with his wife in Florida.
