Chapters Bookstore Welcomes Eric Lamet
Pittsfield - Chapters Bookstore welcomes Eric Lamet, author of A Gift From the Enemy to the event room on September 11, 2008.Eric Lamet will present his book A Gift From the Enemy at Chapters Bookstore, 78 North St. on Thursday September 11, 2008 for discussion and signing, beginning at 6PM. Not an autobiography, nor yet a novel, A Gift From the Enemy is an historical memoir of Italy during World War II, but the book is not about the Holocaust.
With humor and wit, Eric Lamet gives us a remarkable book that is an homage to strength and perseverance, and although it is a tragedy, the book is touching and beautifully written. Eric 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 three children, two stepchildren, and seven granddaughters. They were the reason this book was written.
