Hiding in Plain Sight

how a Jewish girl survived Europe’s heart of darkness
Pieter van Os (trans. David Doherty)

‘I couldn’t stop reading. A stunning book.’

Geert Mak

‘Based on the survival story of one woman, van Os wrote a poignant and disconcerting book about the terrible fate of the Jews, and at the same time about current obsessions with national character and identity.’

Judges’ comments from the Libris History Prize

View all reviews

‘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

‘Hiding in Plain Sight is an utterly immersive book, bringing readers into lives and places and communities, into their loss and (re)building. It is a hard book to read. As it should be.’

Jordana Silverstein, The Conversation

‘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

‘Hiding in Plain Sight [is] a meticulous, engaging, and thoughtful book.’

Yelena Furman, Foreword Reviews

‘Journalist van Os delivers an intense and intriguing portrait of Holocaust survivor Mala Shlafer née Kizel (1926–2021), a Polish Jew who survived the Nazis by passing as an ethnic German Catholic …The result is an immersive study of survival.’

Publishers Weekly

‘Brings a different take to the well-worn genre of WW2 literature.’

DutchNews.nl

‘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

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 World War II.

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.

‘I couldn’t stop reading. A stunning book.’

Geert Mak

Judges’ comments from the Libris History Prize

View all reviews

Judges’ comments from the Brusse Prize for Best Dutch-language Journalistic Book

‘Hiding in Plain Sight is an utterly immersive book, bringing readers into lives and places and communities, into their loss and (re)building. It is a hard book to read. As it should be.’

Jordana Silverstein, The Conversation

Jessica Abelsohn, Australian Jewish News

‘Hiding in Plain Sight [is] a meticulous, engaging, and thoughtful book.’

Yelena Furman, Foreword Reviews

Publishers Weekly

‘Brings a different take to the well-worn genre of WW2 literature.’

DutchNews.nl

BUY EBOOK

Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 234mm × 153mm

Extent:384pp

ISBN (13):9781922585035

RRP:$35.00

Pub date:30 Aug 2022

Rights Held: World English

High-res cover:Download Image

AWARDS

2020 Brusse Prize for Best Dutch-language Journalistic Book - Winner 2020 Libris History Prize - Winner

CATEGORIES / tags

AUTHOR

Pieter van Os

Pieter van Os writes for NRC Handelsblad and De Groene Amsterdammer. His published works include the books The Netherlands in Focus, 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.

TRANSLATOR

David Doherty

David Doherty is based in Amsterdam, where he has been working as a Dutch-to-English 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 novel Zomervacht, won the 2021 Vondel Translation Prize and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize.

HOME

Books

Authors

Blog

Events

About Us

Contact Us

Books

Authors

Blog

Events

About Us

Contact Us

We publish books that matter — narrative and literary nonfiction on important topics, and the best of local, international, and translated fiction.

NO ITEMS

LOG IN