Author

Pieter van Os

Pieter van Os (b. 1971) writes for NRC Handelsblad and De Groene Amsterdammer. His published works include the books The Netherlands in Focus, Father and Son Receive the Spirit (with Henk van Os), and We Understand Each Other Perfectly, about his years as a parliamentary journalist. After living in Warsaw, Poland for four years, he currently resides in Tirana, Albania. In 2020 he won the Brusse Prize for best Dutch-language journalistic book of the year with Hiding in Plain Sight.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Hiding in Plain Sight

How a Jewish Girl Escaped Death and Found Love Among the Nazis

(Prometheus, 2019, 368 pages)

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 airplanes for the Luftwaffe. What nobody knew was that Mala Rivka Kizel had been born into a large Polish orthodox Jewish family in Warsaw in 1926. By using her charm, intelligence, blond hair and blue eyes to assume different identities, she was the only member of her family to survive the Second World War.

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Photo: Angèle Etoundi Essamba
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