A Gift From The Enemy: A True Story of Escape in War Time Italy

The author of this endearing memoir is an 82-year-old retiree living in Florida. How he got there is an amazing tale. Born in Vienna as Erich Lifsch tz, an upper middle class Jew with Polish roots, he left Austria with his parents in 1938, at the age of 8. As Jews, they were not permitted to take much money out of the country as they shuffled across France and came to settle in Italy, as the Nazis marched across borders. You would expect such an account to be filled with the horrors of war. But it is not.Lamet is a natural storyteller. When he identifies himself as being al confino, he is referring to the system of enforced exile, or confinement of untrustworthy elements, which was put in place by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini after allying with Hitler. The author's father made the fateful choice of returning to Poland to see family, leaving his wife and son on their own for the duration of the war. The author and his mother, whom he calls "Mutti," are affectionate, yet she is as willful and worry-prone as he is active and adventure-prone.Excerpt from a review by prof. Andrew Burstein of SLU

Author: Enrico Lamet
Publisher: Enrico Lamet
Published: 01/29/2014
Pages: 332
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.98lbs
Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9780991078103

About the Author
Enrico Lamet was born Erich Lifschutz on May 27, 1930, into an upper-middle-class Jewish family. Both his parents, born in Poland, moved to Vienna before the first Great War. On March 18, 1938, five days after the Anschluss, when German troops had marched into Vienna, Lamet's family fled to Italy, where he spent most of the next twelve years. After World War II ended, Lamet settled in Naples with his family. He finished high school in that city and studied Engineering at the University of Naples. In 1950 the family moved to the United States, where Lamet continued his engineering studies at the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, near his family's home. Deciding that business would be more in keeping with his personality, he embarked on a business career. Over the years he became involved in a variety of enterprises until his eventual retirement as a CEO in 1992. Fluent in German, Italian, English, Spanish, and Yiddish, Lamet served as an interpreter for the U.S. State Department and taught Italian for several years. Lamet has studied piano and voice and, to this day, enjoys performing Neapolitan songs. Lamet has three children, two stepchildren, and seven granddaughters. They were the reason this book was written. He and his wife spend their time in Pittsfield, Mass.

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