Storia d'un Ragazzo Ebreo, A World War II Diary by Leo Berman
Brattleboro Literary Festival Monthly Literary Cocktail Hour
December 9, 5-6pm via Zoom. Free and open to the public.
Leo Berman was a respected and beloved architect and community leader in Brattleboro for nearly 40 years. His passion for historic preservation saved many buildings given up for loss by fire or other reasons in Brattleboro. By the spelling of his last name, one would not guess he was Italian. Born in 1931 in Merano, Alto Adige, Italy, of a Jewish family, Leo did not speak of his flight for life, with his mother and brother, from the Nazis in Italy during World War II. After his death in 2003, Leo's widow published the diary he wrote when he was 14 called, Storia d'un Ragazzo Ebreo ( Story of a Jewish Boy,) in a displaced persons' camp in Rome.
As Leo tells us in his story, he sent a postcard to his father shortly after leaving the refugee camp which said:
"This is the face of a boy whose youth was taken from him, who doesn't know anymore how to cry or laugh, that life has crushed under the inhuman weight of cruel reality. In this photograph you see the mask of a face; if that mask were lifted you would see a mind troubled by life that too cruelly torments your son."
Join Simi Berman, Leo's widow, and Vincent Panella, author of "Sicilian Dreams," and other works on the Italian American experience, as they discuss and read from Leo's diary.
Books may be ordered from your local independent bookstore, or Bookshop.org at
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-story-of-a-jewish-boy-leopold-berman/18600869?ean=9781599541921
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