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Mar 23, 2026
Please submit questions for the speakers in the chat starting on March 23 at approximately 7:30 pm ET.
Join journalist Matti Friedman and Abigail Pogrebin for a conversation about heroism, Jewish memory, and one of the strangest stories of WWII — and Friedman’s new book, Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe.
In 1944, 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. By the end of the mission, not a single Nazi was harmed and not a single Jew was saved, and many of the parachutists died in the process — yet their story would become one of Israel’s founding myths. What happened? And what made them heroes? Using thousands of original documents from once-secret files, manuscripts, memoirs, and unpublished letters, Matti Friedman follows four of the parachutists from the spring of 1944 to the operation’s dramatic end that winter — telling a gripping and surprising tale of a forgotten moment, demonstrating how storytelling itself can have a power even greater than warfare.
Hear Friedman discuss this strange and fascinating story: a conversation exploring the line between myth and reality, heroism and futility, and how it resonates in our own time.
Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe is the winner of the Natan Notable Book award.
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