Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite

Julie Brill’s Hidden in Plain Sight is a family memoir about a daughter trying to understand the Holocaust history that shaped her father’s childhood in Belgrade. Haim survived the German occupation as a small boy, yet the Holocaust Julie learned about in America never seemed to explain his experience. Questions about his survival lead her toward relatives missing from the family story, including her grandfather Alexander, whose fate remained uncertain for decades. She traces records connected to Belgrade’s once-flourishing Jewish community, discovering how much of its Sephardic past had disappeared from the accounts she knew. A trip to Serbia with Haim brings those questions into streets he remembers, where family places sit beside reminders of a Jewish world almost erased. Hidden in Plain Sight follows her search to understand her father’s past through the history surrounding him.

Julie Brill’s Hidden in Plain Sight is an exceptional memoir, and the author writes about Haim with such affection that he quickly feels familiar. The family memory feels tangible, like Halloween when Haim stands in his orange ski jacket, quietly enduring trick-or-treating for his daughter. The descriptive writing is superb at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where Henryk Ross’s photographs leave the author studying faces that could belong in her family album. The same gift appears in Belgrade’s Sephardic cemetery when a keeper raises Regina’s fallen stone with a crowbar, bringing an ancestor physically closer. It appears again in Pančevo, where a Catholic priest opens Radmila’s childhood church before telling the visitors, “Welcome, this is your home.” One of the most fascinating elements is the photography included, the standouts being Alexander and Regina Brill’s 1935 wedding portrait and Haim standing beside his great-grandfather Bernhard’s grave. This is heartfelt and beautiful in every way. Very highly recommended.