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Pieter van Os tells about his book ‘Versteckt vor aller Augen’

Pieter van Os in the Ariowitsch Haus, Leipzig

17 March 2022

On March 17th, the Dutch journalist Pieter van Os will tell about Versteckt vor aller Augen, the German translation of his book Liever dier dan mens, in the Ariowitsch Haus in Leipzig. The event will take place between 20.00 - 21.30 o’clock, and is free to attent.

Versteckt vor aller Augen was translated from Dutch to German by Annette Wunschel, and has been published by EuropaVerlag.

Liever dier dan mens

When Dutch journalist Pieter van Os stumbled upon Mala’s story in a Warsaw piano bar, he set out to revive the world through which she had made her way, from war-ravaged middle Europe to the nascent state of Israel before finally settling in the Netherlands, where she lives today. With her memoir and their interviews as guide, Van Os physically retraces Mala’s steps, stopping in at local archives and remote villages, searching for anyone who might have known or helped her seventy-five years before.

Wandering many a side trail, he recounts individual stories of horror and luck, and discovers that somewhere between memory and history, people can vanish without a trace. With a poetic eye for detail, Van Os weaves a harrowing tapestry of the persecution of Jewish people in Poland and Ukraine before, during and after the war. Through Mala’s story he explores the modern obsession with nation, race and identity, as well as the deepest abysses of human nature that lurk in their wake.

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