A Child Al Confino: The True Story of a Jewish Boy and His Mother in Mussolini's Italy

Five days after Hitler marches into Vienna, Eric Lamet and his parents flee Austria for safety of Italy, then France, then Italy again. There Eric, then aged eleven, is interned with his mother in a remote mountain village for much of the war. In this memoir, Lamet relives his boyhood in an Italy torn by war and chained by Fascism. Through a remarkable feat of memory and imagination, Lamet recreates the Italy he knew from the perspective of the child he was. We 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 candidly 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 the reader will not soon forget.