Hiding in Plain Sight: how a Jewish girl survived Europe's heart of darkness

Description

An extraordinary Holocaust survival story about a young Jewish woman who managed to survive in wartime Poland by pretending to be a Catholic. Polish Catholics believed she was one of them. A devoted Nazi family took her in as if she was their own daughter. She fell in love with a German engineer who built aeroplanes for the Luftwaffe. What none of these people knew was that Mala Rivka Kizel had been born into a large orthodox Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland, in 1926. By using her charm, intelligence, blonde hair, and blue eyes to assume different identities, she was the only member of her family to survive the Second World War. When Dutch journalist Pieter van Os stumbled upon Mala's story, he set out to revive the world through which she had made her way from war-ravaged middle Europe to the nascent state of Israel before finally settling in the Netherlands. With her memoir and their interviews as guide, Van Os physically retraced Mala's steps, stopping in at local archives and remote villages, searching for anyone who might have known or helped her seventy-five years before. At times reading like an erudite detective story, this poignant, rich book is an engrossing meditation on what drives us to fear the 'other', and what in turn might allow us to feel compassion for them. 'Hiding in Plain Sight is, at times, a detective story and at others, a poignant reminder that there were good people who helped, and others who lied to survive, remembering each step of the way that lying, and in turn surviving, was the best revenge of all.' -Jessica Abelsohn, Australian Jewish News 'In almost every sentence, Van Os compels admiration with his elegant prose, demonstrating his erudition but never showing off or taking away from the gravity of the subject matter ... Hiding in Plain Sight is more than a survival narrative. It is a history of Eastern European mentality.' -de Volkskrant 'You rarely see a journalistic book of this narrative-literary level. A unique book that reveals on every page how much careful research and great writing power lies behind it ... van Os shows the value of dwelling longer on a side path or a detail. In this way he knows how to paint a broad and multicoloured image of the blackest pages of recent European history. You are reading this book in one breath.' -Judges' comments from the Brusse Prize for Best Dutch-language Journalistic Book

Pieter van Os (Author) Pieter van Os writes for NRC Handelsblad and De Groene Amsterdammer. His published works include the books The Netherlands in Focus, Father and Son Receive the Spirit (with Henk van Os), and We Understand Each Other Perfectly, about his years as a parliamentary journalist. After having lived in Warsaw for four years, he now resides in Tirana, Albania. In 2020 he won the Libris History Prize and the Brusse Prize for best Dutch-language journalistic book of the year with Hiding in Plain Sight. David Doherty (Translator) David Doherty studied English and literary linguistics in Glasgow before moving to Amsterdam, where he has been working as a translator for over twenty years. His literary work includes novels by award-winning authors Marente de Moor, Peter Terrin, and Alfred Birney. Summer Brother, his translation of Jaap Robben's Zomervacht, won the 2021 Vondel Translation Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.