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AUTHOR
Pieter van Os
Pieter van Os writes for NRC Handelsblad and De Groene Amsterdammer.…
DiscoverPieter Van Os at Boswell Book Festival
Join Hiding in Plain Sight author Pieter van Os in conversation with Anna Somers Cocks at Boswell Book Festival.
An extraordinary Holocaust survival story about an Orthodox 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 prize-winning historian Pieter van Os stumbled upon Mala’s story in a Warsaw piano bar, he set out to retrace her steps, searching for anyone who might have known or helped her seventy-five years before.
For more information and to book your ticket visit the event website here.
Hiding in Plain Sight
An extraordinary story about a Jewish woman who pretended to be Catholic to survive the Holocaust.
Catholics believed she was one of them. A devoted Nazi family took her in. She fell in love with a German engineer who built aeroplanes for the Luftwaffe. But no one knew that Mala Rivka Kizel had been born into a large Orthodox Jewish family. She survived World War II using her charm, intelligence, blonde hair, and blue eyes to assume different identities.
Journalist Pieter van Os retraces Mala’s footsteps through Europe to uncover her extraordinary journey and the stories of those who helped her. This…
