I was born Erich Lifschutz on May 27, 1930, into an upper-middle-class Jewish family. Both my 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, my family fled to Italy.

Those dates send a chill down our spine. This is a war story, isn’t it?
A Gift from the Enemy: A True Story of Escape in War-Time Italy is a compelling childhood memoir of World War II.

Eric (Enrico) Lamet was born in Vienna, and spent the first eight years of his life in a comfortable middle-class atmosphere with his Jewish mother and father in Austria. At only 8 years of age, the Nazis invaded, changing the lives of all European Jews forever. His father went to Poland, never to return again, while Eric and his mother made a harrowing escape to Italy, seeking refuge in various mountain villages to evade capture.

Follow along as Eric and his mother face struggles in fascist WWII Italy, attempting to forge friendships and make a new home. Lamet recounts his mother’s struggles to adjust from sophisticated urban living to a primitive bleak setting. Despite the world crumbling around him, Eric still manages to live an adventurous life.

What kind of readers will your story appeal to?

World War II readers: Italians or Italian descent, Jewish adults, 11th and 12th grade young adults, Holocaust students.

If you like a strong mother child relation, memoirs, history, or World War II, you will love A Gift from the Enemy.

Your mother sounds like an amazing woman.

Lotte is an indomitable and incredibly talented woman. Excellent at any endeavor she undertakes, fluent in 8 languages, humorous, intelligent, comfortable in the company of young or senior people she meets and at home in any social strata.

Have you written any other books?

My next book, awaiting editing, LOVE FROM THE ASHES OF WAR, is a historical fiction that follows the religious love affair between a Catholic man and a Jewish woman in Italy during WWII.

Tell us more about your life.

In 1950 we moved to the United States, where I continued my engineering studies at the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, near my family’s home. Deciding that business would be more in keeping with my personality, I embarked on a business career. Over the years I became involved in a variety of enterprises until my eventual retirement as a CEO in 1992.

Fluent in German, Italian, English, Spanish, and Yiddish, I served as an interpreter for the U.S. State Department and taught Italian for several years.

I have three children, two stepchildren, and seven granddaughters. They were the reason this book was written. My wife and I currently reside in Pittsfield, Mass.

Do you have a website?

http://www.ericlamet.com/