The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #98: Julie Brill
"I was a reluctant memoirist...I wrote the book so the little-known story of the Jews of Serbia could be better known."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 98th installment, featuring Julie Brill, author of Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia. -Sari Botton
P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.
Julie Brill has been collecting family stories since she was a little girl. Her new book is Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia. Julie’s essays have appeared in various publications, including Haaretz, the Forward, Balkan Insight, Kveller, Cognoscenti, and Hey Alma. She shares her family's experiences in the Shoah with middle and high school students through Living Links. Julie is a lactation consultant, childbirth educator, doula, and the author of the anthology Round the Circle: Doulas Share their Experiences. The mother of two grown daughters, Julie lives near Boston, Massachusetts. Find her at www.JulieBrill.com and at Instagram @JulieSBrill
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I’m 54 and have been writing since childhood. Writing was always intertwined with my love of reading. When I was in middle school I wrote reviews on kids books for my local paper. Each week my mom would type them up and drop them at the newspaper office in the town next to us.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia out April 23, 2025.
What number book is this for you?
Number two. My first book was a doula anthology entitled Round the Circle: Doulas Share Their Experiences. I may be the first author to follow a doula anthology with a family Holocaust memoir.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
It’s a memoir that tells my journey to discover, understand, and share with my parents, daughters, and brother the stories of what our family went through in Yugoslavia during the Holocaust. I originally wanted just to write my family story, but the consistent early feedback was I needed to be the central character so I could guide the reader through the history. I was a reluctant memoirist.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
“In Hidden in Plain Sight, Julie Brill embarks on a remarkable journey to unveil her family's hidden history, weaving together her father's vivid memories about his life in German-occupied Serbia with the broader story of the fate of Belgrade's Jews. This compelling memoir traces Brill's efforts to discover and understand her family heritage. Eager to fill a historical and emotional void, Brill pieces together her father's memories, leading to powerful trips with him through Belgrade that provide a deeper understanding of her identity. She unearths her family's lost Serbian past, learns secrets, meets family members she didn’t know she had, and returns to her dad a small part of what the Nazis stole: his own family history.”
Hidden in Plain Sight is a memoir that tells my journey to discover, understand, and share with my parents, daughters, and brother the stories of what our family went through in Yugoslavia during the Holocaust. I originally wanted just to write my family story, but the consistent early feedback was I needed to be the central character so I could guide the reader through the history. I was a reluctant memoirist.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
Our stories begin before we are born and for me, what happened to my father and his family in Serbia during World War II was impactful. From when I was small, I’d listen hard when my dad told his childhood stories. His first memories were of the war: running with his mother to a bomb shelter during the surprise German bombing of Belgrade that targeted his Jewish neighborhood, fleeing the city on foot after the bombing was over, returning to their home and peeking out to see the tops of the heads of the German soldiers on patrol. It was very vivid, cinematic really. He shared them as most parents share their childhood stories, but his were of Belgrade during the occupation and the Holocaust. I knew they were important, but I didn’t have the historical context that would make them make sense.
In Hebrew school we learned about the Shoah in Germany, Poland, and Holland. No one talked about Yugoslavia so it seemed to me that even though my grandfather was murdered, it both was and wasn’t part of the Holocaust. Now I understand that you need survivors to tell the stories. Many German Jews had the time and resources to get out of Germany. Auschwitz was a death camp, but it was also a horrific work camp. Over a million Jews were murdered but also tens of thousands survived and could report on events. In Belgrade, like many cities and villages in Eastern Europe, the killing was done without cattle cars or gas chambers and was so complete that there weren’t survivors and their descendants to pass on the history.
I wrote the book so the little-known story of the Jews of Serbia could be better known. Jews lived in Belgrade for hundreds of years, actually predating the Serbs. It was a vibrant culture that had the first Ladino (Jewish Spanish) printing press. I also wanted to honor my family. They were ordinary people, which is precisely why their story is important.
Once my kids were grown and I had time I did a deep dive into research my family and the history of Jews in Serbia. I found documents that were only newly available. I learned what happened to my grandfather, which my grandmother never knew. My memoir is both a specific story about my discoveries and family history and a general story about the quest to learn our family histories to better understand ourselves.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
I started writing while I was still living the story. That was helpful because I recorded details I would have forgotten. But I couldn’t write towards an ending that hadn’t happened yet. So, there was a lot of rewriting once I knew where it all was going.
I spent much of my adult life to that point actively trying to not think about the Holocaust, after being obsessed as a preteen. Through my research I was uncovering more horrific details, including the specifics of what happened to my grandfather, which we hadn’t known. At one point I had to institute a no-genocide-before-bed rule because this work was overtaking my dreams.
I consistently got feedback that my story was interesting, and the writing was good, but that readers have “Holocaust fatigue” and wouldn’t be interested. I wrote this memoir because there were no books on the Holocaust in Serbia and I wanted what happened there, not just to my family but to the Jewish community, to be known. It’s all very personal so hearing that there was no interest in what happened to what was a longstanding and vibrant community was harsh. Fortunately, I connected with Amsterdam Publishing which focuses on the Holocaust. They are a small but mighty press.
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
My parents, daughters, and brother are in the book, and they read it all and approved it. I made one small omission which didn’t significantly impact the story. It wasn’t something I anticipated being an issue, but I was happy to remove it. I didn’t change any names.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
I’m fascinated by the creative process and how writing can sometimes feel like channeling and sometimes feel like manual labor. I love Liz Gilbert’s Big Magic, Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit, and Stephen King’s On Writing which all break down the process to make it easier. Writing is hard; I don’t want to read books about how hard it is.
Even before I started this project, I was drawn to memoirs by the descendants of Holocaust survivors who are trying to figure out what our relationship to this genocide is. I read Paper Love by Sarah Wildman and Three Minutes in Poland by Glenn Kurtz. Menachem Kieser’s Plunder came out later and is also excellent.
I wrote this memoir because there were no books on the Holocaust in Serbia and I wanted what happened there, not just to my family but to the Jewish community, to be known. It’s all very personal so hearing that there was no interest in what happened to what was a longstanding and vibrant community was harsh. Fortunately, I connected with Amsterdam Publishing which focuses on the Holocaust. They are a small but mighty press.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
I’m fascinated by the creative process and how writing can sometimes feel like channeling and sometimes feel like manual labor. I love Liz Gilbert’s Big Magic, Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit, and Stephen King’s On Writing which all break down the process to make it easier. Writing is hard; I don’t want to read books about how hard it is.
Even before I started this project, I was drawn to memoirs by the descendants of Holocaust survivors who are trying to figure out what our relationship to this genocide is. I read Paper Love by Sarah Wildman and Three Minutes in Poland by Glenn Kurtz. Menachem Kieser’s Plunder came out later and is also excellent.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
It helps to be able to envision the day when it will be done, even when you can’t see the path to get there. I can’t remember where I heard the advice to make book covers in Canva, but that was invigorating. Also, I tried to keep moving forward, even with the tiniest step, and to hold the idea that even though I didn’t know the length of the road or the obstacles, every movement was progress.
I am grateful to have writer friends who helped me birth my book with the hearts of doulas, providing emotional and information support. Classes and supportive writer friends go a long way. And I think, as memoirists, we need to be careful. I heard Chris Voss in an interview with Charles Bock say something like congratulations on your new memoir and I’m sorry you had the opportunity to write it. Just about every memoirist is writing about a difficult time in their life. Even a memoir about winning the lottery is likely about how it ruined the author’s life.
During the writing process, memoirists are likely to be still processing trauma and often sharing it with others outside their immediate circle for the first time. They might be angry, sad, depressed, estranged from family members, isolated from their community, or in other ways still suffering from the effects of their experiences and so need to hold each other and themselves with a certain amount of grace. Mentors must keep in mind the power imbalance and how writers often feel both vulnerable and dependent on approval from those who lead workshops or provide comments on drafts in progress. Groups need to create and enforce boundaries to navigate the discussion of highly sensitive topics as they surface. One important lesson I learned in my process: if a space feels unhealthy, it’s ok to leave.
What do you love about writing?
The moments when words are pouring onto the page are some kind of dopamine hit.
What frustrates you about writing?
That feeling that I’m building the plane while flying it. The editing process can be so mundane. The number of ”no’s” I’ve had to hear before placing a piece or launching my memoir. This is not for the faint of heart!
What about writing surprises you?
The experience of launching memoir, essay or book, into the world and hearing from readers who found it impactful. For example, a lot of folks could identify with my childhood experiences of reading Anne Frank and then considering which non-Jewish friends might hide me if it came to that. There aren’t a lot of descendants of survivors of the Holocaust in Serbia, because there were so few survivors. But I have connected with some, and everyone has said we never heard of another family with a similar story before. And given the size and interconnectedness of the pre-war community, I am likely related to many of these people.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
My schedule overall and for writing is fairly irregular, but morning is definitely my best time for writing.
I started writing while I was still living the story. That was helpful because I recorded details I would have forgotten. But I couldn’t write towards an ending that hadn’t happened yet. So, there was a lot of rewriting once I knew where it all was going.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
I like to knit and quilt, though I haven’t done much lately. I write a lot in my mind while I’m walking, cross-country skiing, kayaking, and dreaming. Kayaking can feel dreamy which is great for pre-writing. Pre-writing makes me efficient when I sit down to put it on the page. But editing is a different story.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
There were ten years between my first book and my second. Maybe in ten years I’ll be out with a third one. Right now I’m focused on marketing Hidden in Plain Sight. I wrote it to get the little-known story of the Jews of Serbia out into the world and now with the April 23 release, I’m really just starting on that journey.
Thank you so much for this and for your important contributions to holocaust history and to memoir.
Wonderful interview! Can't wait to read this book. Love hearing about the backstory--it takes so much courage and persistence to be a memoirist. Congratulations to Julie and wishing her much success sharing this fascinating, under-reported piece of Holocaust history.