Media & Reviews for Hidden in Plain Sight
Reviews and Interviews
Literary Mama: Mother, Daughter, Memory Keeper: Julie Brill’s Triple Role
"Brill writes from multiple vantage points: as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and as the mother of two daughters, now adults. Her professional background as a lactation consultant, childbirth educator, and doula has given her deep insight into how experiences travel through families across time."
Jewish Press: Searching For Serbia’s Erased Jewish History
"Hidden in Plain Sight is a rare combination. It’s meticulously researched, emotionally raw, and historically vital. It gives voice to a community almost completely erased, and it does so with grace and force."
Oyster River Pages: Interview with Julie Brill
"Brill demonstrates how important it is to honor and remember Jewish history as well as give a voice to the Serbian Jewish lives that were lost, and whose story hasn’t been fully heard till now."
Hippocampus: Julie Brill, Author of Hidden in Plain Sight - Interviewed by Diane Gottlieb
"Through the eyes of a daughter eager to learn more about her father’s younger years, readers are treated to both literal and figurative journeys."
TC Jewfolk: New Memoir Sheds Overdue Light On The Experiences Of Jews During World War II In Serbia
"In the 80 years since World War II ended, our knowledge of the Holocaust, has been informed in large measure by survivor accounts, especially from the Ashkenazi Jews of Germany and Poland, where the Nazis built many of the concentration camps. There has been far less written about the Jews of Eastern Europe."
Author Interview: ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’ by Julie Brill - Reading Nook
"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. 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."
Jewish Boston: Uncovering a Lost Chapter of Holocaust History in Serbia
"In her fascinating and insightful new memoir, “Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia,” Julie Brill breaks new ground in a little-known piece of Holocaust history—the year-long Nazi genocide of Serbian Jews in their own country."
Hasty Booklist: Author Interview: Julie Brill
"I grew up hearing stories and being read to and then bringing a book everywhere with me once I learned to read. I’d keep a book in my desk at school for the spare moment to turn a few pages. That made me want to write from a young age. My first writing gig was in middle school. I reviewed young adult books for the local paper. I wrote them out and my mom typed them up and delivered them to my editor."
The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #98: Julie Brill
"I was a reluctant memoirist...I wrote the book so the little-known story of the Jews of Serbia could be better known."
The Bookshelf Cafe News: Author Interview: Julie Brill
"In some sense, I think this book was percolating for a long time. I’ve been collecting family stories since I was a little girl. But I started in earnest in 2017, when my younger daughter left for college and I had the time and energy for the research and the writing. So it was seven years between the first draft and the finished manuscript."
Haaretz: Trying to Understand How Her Serbian Father Survived the Shoah, This Author Uncovered a Family Secret
“Julie Brill always wondered how so many members of her family were spared when virtually the entire Jewish population of Belgrade was wiped out in the war. Her new book 'Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia' unravels the mystery.”
The Bedford Citizen: Lifelong Bedford Residents Pens ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’
“Our stories begin before we were born,” says Julie Brill, long-time Bedford resident and author of the new memoir “Hidden in Plain Sight.”
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb
“. . .we think of history as something static, but the experiences I write about are of discovering more history. I accessed documents that weren’t available even a few years earlier.
The information I found and our trips to Serbia helped my father recall memories he couldn’t access before. We found family we hadn’t known existed who had more documents and photographs. I felt I was returning family history to my father and to my whole family that the Nazis had stolen.”
Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature: Between Memory and Geography: Julie Brill’s Hidden in Plain Sight by Tamara MC
“Brill’s Hidden in Plain Sight is not a conventional Holocaust memoir; rather, it is an act of literary cartography – mapping the landscapes of exile, inherited trauma, and historical erasure. She takes readers on a journey through Belgrade, where her family’s history is embedded in its streets and architecture, and where memory itself is both visible and hidden in the spaces between past and present.”
The Foreword
"Recounting a search for a father’s memories and family history, Hidden in Plain Sight is an excellent memoir that bears witness to the loss of a community."
Of the Book Review
"With a powerful and distinctive narrative voice, Brill amplifies the stories of the thousands of Serbian Jews who were silenced by history, their presence in the country now [...]
Putting this book down is difficult, as Brill’s writing is engrossing. Whether through her three-act structure or her vivid depictions of relatives and the places she visits in Serbia, Brill’s writing truly stands apart when she inhabits the minds of her ancestors, bringing their stories to life with rare depth and intimacy."
Balkan Insight: Author Lifts Lid on Forgotten Holocaust Stories in Serbia by Milica Stojanovic
“Hidden in Plain Sight is about family – about ties and legacies, but also about the joy of newly discovered relatives – people Brill was only aware existed, or didn’t know existed. And all that in another continent, thousands of kilometers away.”
TV
Interview with A Novel Idea on Danvers Community Access Television in Danvers, MA
Julie Brill discusses her family history in the Holocaust in Serbia and the research that went into her memoir; Hidden In Plain Sight
Interview with BCAT TV in Burlington, MA - "Local Author Shares Family Story During Holocaust Memorial Service"
Julie Brill discusses her family history in the Holocaust in Serbia and why we tell these stories on Yom Hashoah.
Interview with CBS WUSA 9 "Great Day Washington" in Washington, DC
Julie Brill discussing the launch of her memoir Hidden in Plain Sight, marking Yom Hashoah as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and the Holocaust in Serbia.
Interview with FOX 17 TV WXMI in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Julie Brill discussing World Book Day and her new book Hidden in Plain Sight.
Interview with ABC WTVM TV in Columbus, GA
Julie Brill discussing National Reading Month and her new book Hidden in Plain Sight.
Interview with CBS WRDW TV in Augusta, GA
Julie Brill discussing I Love to Read Month and her new book Hidden in Plain Sight.
Interview with ABC WTNH TV in New Haven, CT
Julie Brill discussing International Holocaust Remembrance Day and her new book Hidden in Plain Sight.
Interview with NBC 10 "Louisiana Living" KTVE TV in Monroe, LA
Julie Brill discussing International Holocaust Remembrance Day and her new book Hidden in Plain Sight.