In Conversation with Heather Reisman & Matti Friedman

In Out Of The Sky, journalist Matti Friedman unravels one of the strangest episodes of World War II: In 1944, where a team of young women and men who had escaped the Holocaust, made the inconceivable choice to parachute back into Nazi-occupied Europe under the cover of a British military operation. Chief Book lover of Indigo, Heather Reisman, led a brilliant and animated conversation about the historical significance of the story, and what Matti learned during the process of writing his new novel.

The para­chutists were to coor­di­nate the res­cue of downed Allied air­men. Unof­fi­cial­ly — and more urgent­ly — they were to reach sur­viv­ing Jews and pre­pare them for mass immi­gra­tion. ​“Death to fas­cism” was con­stant­ly on their lips. But no coun­try on earth pri­or­i­tized sav­ing these peo­ple to the extent that their ene­mies pri­or­i­tized killing them. Matti's story shows us the sacrifices people made to ensure Jews had a pathway to survival in a world that didn't want them to survive.