Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia, with Julie Brill

Click here to register for this free virtual program, co-presented by New Lehrhaus.

“A standout among Holocaust memoirs…It shines a bright light on the children of survivors, providing an intimate view of the deep trauma inherited and internalized by them, and translated in this case into an extraordinary book.”
-Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis University

Hidden in Plain Sight tells a powerful, untold chapter of Holocaust history and a daughter’s enduring quest to know the story that began a generation before her birth. From childhood, Julie Brill struggled to understand how her father survived as a young Jewish boy in Belgrade, where Nazis murdered ninety percent of the Jewish population without gas chambers or cattle cars. Through exacting research, a bit of luck, and three emotional trips to Serbia, she pieces together her family’s lost past, unearths secrets, and returns to her father a small part of what the Nazis stole: his own family history.

Julie Brill has been collecting family stories since she was a little girl. She is a lactation consultant, childbirth educator, doula, and the author of the anthology Round the Circle: Doulas Share Their Experiences. Her essays have appeared in various publications, including Haaretz, The Forward, Balkan Insight, Kveller, Cognoscenti, and Hey Alma. She shares her family’s experiences in the Shoah with middle and high school students through Living Links.