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Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia
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 A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure
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 his own family history.
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 his own family history.
234 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 23, 2025
16 people are currently reading
51 people want to read
About the author
Julie Brill
3 books4 followersAs a child, Julie Brill held two conflicting beliefs. She knew her Jewish grandfather had been murdered by Germans 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.
Even frequent readers of Holocaust history likely do not understand the Serbian story. Destruction there came early and fast. Without cattle cars, gas chambers, or distant camps, the Nazis murdered almost the entire Jewish population before the plan for the Final Solution was even set.
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 lead to Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia.
Julie has written for Haaretz, the Forward, Kveller, WBUR’s Cognocenti, The Times of Israel, Balkan Insight, and elsewhere. A dedicated Holocaust educator, she shares her family’s experiences in middle and high school classrooms through Living Links.
Additionally, she is a lactation consultant, doula, childbirth educator, and the author of the anthology Round the Circle: Doulas Share Their Experiences. She began attending births and teaching childbirth classes in 1992 and has supported thousands of families in the childbearing year. She graduated from Tufts University, with a degree in Sociology and Gender Studies, and completed the Massachusetts Midwifery Alliance Apprenticeship Course. She is the mother of two grown daughters.
Even frequent readers of Holocaust history likely do not understand the Serbian story. Destruction there came early and fast. Without cattle cars, gas chambers, or distant camps, the Nazis murdered almost the entire Jewish population before the plan for the Final Solution was even set.
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 lead to Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia.
Julie has written for Haaretz, the Forward, Kveller, WBUR’s Cognocenti, The Times of Israel, Balkan Insight, and elsewhere. A dedicated Holocaust educator, she shares her family’s experiences in middle and high school classrooms through Living Links.
Additionally, she is a lactation consultant, doula, childbirth educator, and the author of the anthology Round the Circle: Doulas Share Their Experiences. She began attending births and teaching childbirth classes in 1992 and has supported thousands of families in the childbearing year. She graduated from Tufts University, with a degree in Sociology and Gender Studies, and completed the Massachusetts Midwifery Alliance Apprenticeship Course. She is the mother of two grown daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 24, 2025
Through the pain of her family and an unquenchable thirst for truth, Julie Brill opens up the forgotten page in Holocaust history.
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: A FAMILY MEMOIR AND THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE HOLOCAUST IN SERBIA is Julie Brill's quest to uncover her family's roots. How could her father Haim, his mother, and sister survive while almost all Jews of Serbia were killed? Why did her grandmother leave after the war? With the help of Jewish organizations in Serbia, she obtained documents related to her ancestors. Her discoveries and the subsequent two trips to Belgrade helped her deepen her understanding of herself. Some of the discoveries were hard to accept. The author could achieve the almost impossible task of erecting the first Stolperstein in Belgrade commemorating her grandfather, Alexander Brill.
Part historical record, part memoir, HIDDEN IN PLAN SIGHT resonates today as anti-semitism again rises its ugly head around the world. Out of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children of the Sajmište concentration camp, only one infant, who was smuggled to safety, survived. If we don't know history, it tends to repeat itself.
I received an advanced review copy through Netgalley, and I'm leaving this review voluntarily.
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: A FAMILY MEMOIR AND THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE HOLOCAUST IN SERBIA is Julie Brill's quest to uncover her family's roots. How could her father Haim, his mother, and sister survive while almost all Jews of Serbia were killed? Why did her grandmother leave after the war? With the help of Jewish organizations in Serbia, she obtained documents related to her ancestors. Her discoveries and the subsequent two trips to Belgrade helped her deepen her understanding of herself. Some of the discoveries were hard to accept. The author could achieve the almost impossible task of erecting the first Stolperstein in Belgrade commemorating her grandfather, Alexander Brill.
Part historical record, part memoir, HIDDEN IN PLAN SIGHT resonates today as anti-semitism again rises its ugly head around the world. Out of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children of the Sajmište concentration camp, only one infant, who was smuggled to safety, survived. If we don't know history, it tends to repeat itself.
I received an advanced review copy through Netgalley, and I'm leaving this review voluntarily.
April 1, 2025
Hidden in plain sight: a family memoir and the untold story of a Holocaust in Serbia by Julie brill is a fascinating retelling of events.
Having heard about the Holocaust, Julie couldn't understand as a child how her father has survived. As an adult she did extensive research and took 3 trips to Serbia and managed to piece together her families past. Along the way she uncovered secrets, and gave her father back a piece of his family history that he thought was long gone.
I especially enjoyed that Julie included a bunch of pictures at the end of the book. They were amazing to look through after reading and being able to connect them to what you just read.
Special thank you to Julie Brill for sharing your family's story and for working with NetGalley. I received an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion and review.
Having heard about the Holocaust, Julie couldn't understand as a child how her father has survived. As an adult she did extensive research and took 3 trips to Serbia and managed to piece together her families past. Along the way she uncovered secrets, and gave her father back a piece of his family history that he thought was long gone.
I especially enjoyed that Julie included a bunch of pictures at the end of the book. They were amazing to look through after reading and being able to connect them to what you just read.
Special thank you to Julie Brill for sharing your family's story and for working with NetGalley. I received an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion and review.
May 6, 2025
Hidden in Plain Sight by Julie Brill is an extraordinary and deeply moving family memoir that sheds light on a little-known chapter of Holocaust history—the destruction of the Jewish community of Belgrade, Serbia. The author embarks on a powerful journey to uncover her father’s childhood during the Holocaust, weaving together personal memories, meticulous research, and historical reflection.
Brill’s narrative is both intimate and expansive. She brings us into her family’s kitchen, where Google Earth searches for her father’s prewar home in Dorćol, Belgrade, serving as a poignant metaphor for the quest to reclaim lost history. Through her father’s fragments of memory—a childhood spent evading German soldiers, living on a farm that sheltered both Nazi officers and Partisan fighters, witnessing the bombings of Belgrade—Brill reconstructs a past that was hidden not only from outsiders but often from the family itself.
Brill’s memoir is powerful in its exploration of post memory—the emotional inheritance carried by the children of survivors. She reflects on how her father’s silences and stories shaped her own identity, and how growing up in suburban Boston as the daughter of a Serbian Jewish survivor placed her in a unique space, both inside and outside the dominant narratives of Holocaust remembrance.
Brill doesn’t shy away from the painful truths: that Serbia was one of the first places declared Judenfrei by the Nazis, that her grandfather was murdered in a mass shooting in 1941, and that most of Belgrade’s Jewish community was annihilated within a year. Yet in the face of these devastating facts, she honors the fierce resilience of her father, grandmother, and great-grandmother, whose courage enabled their survival.
Her writing is rich with evocative imagery—whether describing the house her father remembers, now replaced by a modern building; the Star of David on a crumbling wall; or the absent photographs of a grandfather she never met. The memoir is also a meditation on memory itself: what is preserved, what is lost, and what it means to bear witness across generations.
Brill’s narrative is both intimate and expansive. She brings us into her family’s kitchen, where Google Earth searches for her father’s prewar home in Dorćol, Belgrade, serving as a poignant metaphor for the quest to reclaim lost history. Through her father’s fragments of memory—a childhood spent evading German soldiers, living on a farm that sheltered both Nazi officers and Partisan fighters, witnessing the bombings of Belgrade—Brill reconstructs a past that was hidden not only from outsiders but often from the family itself.
Brill’s memoir is powerful in its exploration of post memory—the emotional inheritance carried by the children of survivors. She reflects on how her father’s silences and stories shaped her own identity, and how growing up in suburban Boston as the daughter of a Serbian Jewish survivor placed her in a unique space, both inside and outside the dominant narratives of Holocaust remembrance.
Brill doesn’t shy away from the painful truths: that Serbia was one of the first places declared Judenfrei by the Nazis, that her grandfather was murdered in a mass shooting in 1941, and that most of Belgrade’s Jewish community was annihilated within a year. Yet in the face of these devastating facts, she honors the fierce resilience of her father, grandmother, and great-grandmother, whose courage enabled their survival.
Her writing is rich with evocative imagery—whether describing the house her father remembers, now replaced by a modern building; the Star of David on a crumbling wall; or the absent photographs of a grandfather she never met. The memoir is also a meditation on memory itself: what is preserved, what is lost, and what it means to bear witness across generations.
February 12, 2025
Hidden in Plain Sight is the true story of the author's Jewish family history in Serbia, before, during and after World War II. Julie Brill's father was a small child living in Belgrade during the war before emigrating to Israel in 1948. He often told his daughter stories about his experiences, unlike many survivors. His father was murdered, though not at a camp he had to travel to. Nazis regularly shot Jewish men in Belgrade and bragged that the city was the first to be Jew free. Not only does the author have inherited memories but also the experience of three visits to find out more about her family. There she and her father had a Croatian guide who took them to various locations. She discusses how her history is confusing as nearly all Jews in Belgrade were exterminated and as such, very few have (had) stories to recount. I live part time in Croatia and recognized many such places including parks and monuments. I appreciate the personal touch of the photographs.
Amongst the stories which stand out most to me are the details including the birthday cake chocolate, food distribution containers, the fascinating restitution fund process, the concept of inherited memories, delicious traditional Serbian meals with newly-found family (I can relate!), and Sephardic history. Memories Julie has of her childhood evoke nostalgia, too, like playing a special game with her grandfather which involved cereal boxes and the fridge.
Books like this are crucial and should be required reading. Writing one's family history with little to go on must take nerves of steel and resolve. I am grateful to World War II survivors who have told their stories and passed them down to family members who painstakingly research and investigate every nook and cranny. It is understandable Julie is eager for her descendants to learn as much as they can.
Amongst the stories which stand out most to me are the details including the birthday cake chocolate, food distribution containers, the fascinating restitution fund process, the concept of inherited memories, delicious traditional Serbian meals with newly-found family (I can relate!), and Sephardic history. Memories Julie has of her childhood evoke nostalgia, too, like playing a special game with her grandfather which involved cereal boxes and the fridge.
Books like this are crucial and should be required reading. Writing one's family history with little to go on must take nerves of steel and resolve. I am grateful to World War II survivors who have told their stories and passed them down to family members who painstakingly research and investigate every nook and cranny. It is understandable Julie is eager for her descendants to learn as much as they can.
April 23, 2025
Wow, what a fascinating, throughly researched biography!
I knew absolutely nothing about the Nazi occupation of Belgrade. To be honest I couldn't locate it on a map, and didn't even know it had been occupied. In my defence, the history of Yugoslavia/Serbia is complicated, and the names and boundaries of the land have changed multiple times within my lifetime.
There was a lot of history in this book. Not just about Julie's family, but the general population. I can't imagine finding out so much when she had so little to go on in the form of memories and paperwork.
Being totally honest, at times I lost track of the timeline and who was who. A Physical copy of the book where I could flick back and forth between the text and the family trees would have helped this issue I think. I'm also fairly certain that the first English Stolperstein was laid in London, not the Channel Islands, but that's a fairly minor issue.
Thank you Julie for sharing your fascinating family history. Hopefully the Serbian government will start to allow more to be discovered and remembered in the future.
I knew absolutely nothing about the Nazi occupation of Belgrade. To be honest I couldn't locate it on a map, and didn't even know it had been occupied. In my defence, the history of Yugoslavia/Serbia is complicated, and the names and boundaries of the land have changed multiple times within my lifetime.
There was a lot of history in this book. Not just about Julie's family, but the general population. I can't imagine finding out so much when she had so little to go on in the form of memories and paperwork.
Being totally honest, at times I lost track of the timeline and who was who. A Physical copy of the book where I could flick back and forth between the text and the family trees would have helped this issue I think. I'm also fairly certain that the first English Stolperstein was laid in London, not the Channel Islands, but that's a fairly minor issue.
Thank you Julie for sharing your fascinating family history. Hopefully the Serbian government will start to allow more to be discovered and remembered in the future.
May 1, 2025
The family memoir, Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia explores the unlikely survival of a Jewish child in the face of ethnic cleansing during World War II-era Belgrade. Julie Brill accompanies her father on a multi-generational journey to understand her family history. Along with her father and her daughter, she unearths a complex past. With keen sensitivity to her father’s difficult past, Julie reveals the horrors of genocide in Eastern Europe, based on her father’s first-person accounts drawn from a child’s memory. She enhances those glimpses of a traumatic past with extensive research, making this memoir unique and important.
In Hidden in Plain Sight, Julie shines a light on an overlooked part of our human past in this important book of family and world history.
In Hidden in Plain Sight, Julie shines a light on an overlooked part of our human past in this important book of family and world history.
March 3, 2025
This book is not only a needed historical piece of work in Holocaust history but a story of memory, family, identity, perseverance and love. Reading the book you are accompanying the author(and members of her family) as she researches her family's untold Holocaust story in Serbia. Through her work she finds family and relationships she never knew existed sharing this bittersweet and important journey with the reader through her warm and clear writing.
Reading about Julie's perseverance in getting a Stolperstein Stone placed at her family's last place of residence is moving. This family memoir of love, survival and resistance is for us all. I admire the work she has done to give something back to her beloved father that was stolen so long ago.
Reading about Julie's perseverance in getting a Stolperstein Stone placed at her family's last place of residence is moving. This family memoir of love, survival and resistance is for us all. I admire the work she has done to give something back to her beloved father that was stolen so long ago.
April 23, 2025
Ms. Brill makes her personal search to piece together what happened to her family in Serbia during the Holocaust, all of ours. She meticulously weaves historical facts that show the awful truths about genocide and the attempts at points, by the Serbian government, and therefore, society, to erase this from its history. She and her family also advocate for transparency to bring greater light to the tragic events of the war there. I wholeheartedly recommend you take a deep dive into this memoir, giving you the opportunity to learn about Ms. Brill’s journey, and to reflect upon your own familial discoveries.
April 23, 2025
A beautifully written and moving Holocaust memoir.
Beautifully written, Hidden in Plain Sight is a tender family story that blurs the lines between personal memoir, Holocaust account and historical narrative. While filled with oft-times surprising factual tidbits, “Hidden” never seems heavy handed or dry. Instead, author Julie Brill steadily and brilliantly pulls together the emotional and chronological ingredients of her family story until they coalesce into a cohesive and moving family history. Brilliantly tells a lesser- known story of Serbia during the Holocaust and she does so with great finesse. A pleasure to read!
Beautifully written, Hidden in Plain Sight is a tender family story that blurs the lines between personal memoir, Holocaust account and historical narrative. While filled with oft-times surprising factual tidbits, “Hidden” never seems heavy handed or dry. Instead, author Julie Brill steadily and brilliantly pulls together the emotional and chronological ingredients of her family story until they coalesce into a cohesive and moving family history. Brilliantly tells a lesser- known story of Serbia during the Holocaust and she does so with great finesse. A pleasure to read!
April 25, 2025
This is very well written and shows incredible insight into the power of memory, including second hand memories. It is also very well researched and I was fascinated to learn about the impact of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia which, as the author says, is not as well documented as some other countries impacted by the tragedy. The author’s personal connection to the story adds power and conviction to the story they are telling but they do not drift into self indulgence or sentimentality in relating it. A terrific addition to the suite of books which must continue to be shared, read and discussed as we seek to learn from history.
March 19, 2025
Beautiful story focusing on the relationship between a father and his daughter through the story telling of the father’s experience in Yugoslavia during WWII and the daughter’s relationship with exploring her ancestry and family’s history over her life
As it got further into the book and deeper into the history I struggled to keep up and remember all the facts, resulting in me loosing a bit of interest but I was glad that this book allowed me the chance to learn some new information
I was provided a review copy of this book
As it got further into the book and deeper into the history I struggled to keep up and remember all the facts, resulting in me loosing a bit of interest but I was glad that this book allowed me the chance to learn some new information
I was provided a review copy of this book
March 9, 2025
I loved the way Julie moved between the present and the past, then back again, throughout the story. It will prompt readers to discuss their own family history more deeply than "the basics" with older relatives before it's too late. It is also a little-told story of southeastern Europe that deserves to be told and archived. Despite the topic, the rediscovery of distant family and Julie's strong connection with her direct family made the book enjoyable to read.
March 9, 2025
"Hidden in Plain Sight" breaks new ground by relating, in vivid detail, the too-little-known history of the holocaust in Serbia.
In parallel, it’s a riveting detective story, showing how the author pieced together disparate clues, over many years--through clever online sleuthing and several trips to Belgrade--to learn what happened to her forebears.
An important story, told in compelling and lucid prose.
In parallel, it’s a riveting detective story, showing how the author pieced together disparate clues, over many years--through clever online sleuthing and several trips to Belgrade--to learn what happened to her forebears.
An important story, told in compelling and lucid prose.
March 31, 2025
I was very glad to have a dreary weather weekend so that I could read this book. I have studied the Holocaust all my life and read many books but this one was a completely new angle for me to consider. I did not know about how the Holocaust played out in Serbia and also learned from the book about different Jewish lines. It was a very easy to read and well written accounts of Julie Brill’s search to put together pieces of her family’s experience in a time that much was hidden.
April 29, 2025
I was grabbed into this book so quickly. A true story of the authors father and how she brought to life his story of the Holocaust. It is a wonderful story even in a tragic time.
May 8, 2025
This is a fascinating story of the search by the author to understand the history, both personal and public of Serbia during the holocaust, a topic rarely dhared.
April 23, 2025
During these confusing times where people are trying to erase history of the Jewish people this account was a remarkable and historical rendering of a lifetime of mystery undiscovered and rediscovered by Julie BRILL in her compelling account of her family’s history. The book was well crafted and written and beautifully expressed. Congratulations on a great accomplishment. A must read for everyone to know What was suffered by so many brutally exterminated and unable to have their voices heard. Julie speaks for them now.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews