A Childhood, al Confino: The True Story of a Jewish Boy and His Mother in War-Torn Italy »

Eric Lamet moved to the United States from Italy in 1950. A retired businessman, he is fluent in several languages, has taught Italian, and has served as an interpreter for the State Department.

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.