Recounts the author's childhood as a Jew in Italy during WWII, interned in a small village with his remarkable mother. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and learned quite a lot in the process. Highly recommended! ( )

The part that sticks with you in this book is early on. He describes being a carefree boy in Vienna and then the change in the people around as they embraced antisemitism. You can hear behind the words on the page the hurt and puzzlement echoing a lifetime away from his childhood. The maid in their house was one of his best friends, he would sleep with her in her bed some mornings they were so close, and he talks about how almost overnight she refused to have anything to do with him and quit cleaning or paying any attention to her duties.

Most of the book deals with living in a remote village in Italy during the war. ( )

While I knew that Mussolini and Hitler were allies, I never gave any thought to what happened to the Jewish people in Italy. This book opened my eyes to that part of history. The impression I got from this book was that Mussolini didn’t hate the Jews, but he wanted to stay on Hitler’s good side so he ordered them into what is referred to as ‘internal exile’.

This is the autobiography or memoirs of Eric Lamet, his parents managed a luxury hotel in Vienna when the Nazis invaded. He and his parents fled for their lives. Eric’s parents shielded him from the ugly truth of war so he spent much time thinking they ‘hated’ him and were moving around just to torture or inconvenience him. I am referring to torture as a seven year old who has had a luxurious upbringing would define it. He records the moves they had to make, how he had to leave beloved possessions behind and how although his mother loved him and protected him, he eventually came to understand the horror of war.

His father went to Poland, Eric and his mother ended up in a little village in Italy that lacked many modern conveniences, they were ‘confined’ here, as in they couldn’t leave without permission. They had to report each morning to the police.

It was very interesting seeing war from the perspective of a young boy far away from the actual fighting, he records honestly his feelings and his interactions with the villagers, the priest and even a German soldier. He is very honest about how at times he was confused, afraid and resentful of his situation. Through it all his love and admiration for his mother shines through.

Some reviewers have doubted the veracity of this account since the events Lamet is recalling happened so long ago, while I agree that some of the details my not be accurate, I think the feeling portrayed and accurate and found this book enlightening and interesting. ( )

Good book. Reads well, but I spent most of the novel wondering how much was memory and how much was adult reflection of childhood memories. ( )

As all authobiographies of that time, this one is informative and insightful, and there are many little details of daily life in war times that add to our understanding of what it was like.

The situation of the author and his household was probably not typical, but the humanity of small (and large) town mayors that forgot often to implement racial laws seems to be not that uncommon.

For the rest, the book is not particularly well written, and the perspective it lends on those times is mediated by memory (and possibly reappraisal), of course, and by the eyes of a small child who lacked the maturity to see through many of the things happening around him. ( )