Memoirs of a Fortunate Jew: An Italian Story

The author, now in his 60s, is a Haifa University professor, a Jew who grew up in Fascist Italy. With a sharp eye for vivid details, Segre recounts his comfortable childhood in the Piedmont, where his parents were at once assimilated Jews and vigorous Italian patriots. The crisis that sparked his quest for self-identity came in 1938, with the passage of Italy's first antiJewish laws. Once sheltered amid a natural-seeming Fascism, Segre suddenly discovered his ""Jewish condition.'' At 16, virtually ignorant of Judaism, he fled to Palestine, where on a kibbutz and in the British army he worked to understand ``the meaning of the new life facing me.'' Segre's reflections on people and incidents give considerable depth to this unusual story of coming of age. (February 26)