Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia with Julie Brill in Conversation with Linda K. Wertheimer
CGES Hybrid Event
Tuesday, April 29th, from 7:00 - 9:00 PM (ET)
Rapaporte Treasure Hall (Goldfarb Library), Brandeis University
Julie and Linda will be available for book signings following the event.
Refreshments will be served.
About the Event
Discover 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 90 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.
“Hidden in Plain Sight stands out among Holocaust memoirs. It focuses on Belgrade, a Sephardic community whose horrific experience during the Shoah is often overlooked. [...] It provides an object lesson in how to carry out research, what it takes to recover lost family secrets. Finally, it shines a bright light on the children of survivors [...] an extraordinary book."
-Jonathan D. Sarna, University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University
"In quiet, lovely prose, Julie Brill has delivered a powerful reminder of why our stories-personal, familial, historical-are so crucial. A moving excavation of a family story."
-Menachem Kaiser, author of Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure
Watch a short video in which Julie speaks about why she wrote her memoir.
About the Speakers
Julie Brill has been collecting family stories since she was a little girl. As a child, she held two conflicting beliefs. She knew Germans had murdered her Jewish grandfather in occupied Yugoslavia, yet she somehow believed the Holocaust had never come to his hometown of Belgrade. The family anecdotes her father passed down, a blend of his early memories and what his mother told him, didn’t match what Julie had heard about Germany, Poland, and Anne Frank in Holland during World War II.
With so few Jewish survivors and descendants from Serbia, the story of the Shoah there has gone untold. Julie’s quest to understand and share what she learned led to Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia.
Julie 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. The mother of two grown daughters, Julie lives near Boston, Massachusetts.
Find her at www.juliebrill.com and on Instagram @juliesbrill.
Linda K. Wertheimer is the award-winning author of Faith Ed, Teaching about Religion in an Age of Intolerance, published by Beacon Press. Linda is a former education editor of The Boston Globe and reported full-time previously for The Dallas Morning News and other publications. Now an independent journalist, her long-form journalism and commentaries have been published in many publications, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, The New Republic, and The Atlantic. Faith Ed or excerpts from it won honors from the Religion News Association, the Education Writers Association and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She has been a writer-in-residence at the Chautauqua Institution’s Writing Center and in 2020-21, was Spencer Fellow in Education Journalism at Columbia University. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and son. Her book and op-eds have landed her speaking gigs around the country and interviews on podcasts, NPR shows, and CNN. Website: www.lindakwertheimer.com