Out of the Sky, Matti Friedman
Out of the Sky, Matti Friedman
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Out of the Sky
An Untold Story of Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe

Author: Matti Friedman

Narrator: Matti Friedman

Unabridged: 6 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/24/2026


Synopsis

Was it one of the war’s most memorable feats of valor or an act of desperation, even madness? In Out of the Sky, Matti Friedman unravels one of the strangest episodes of World War II: 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. Yet 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. Even so, some of their names would become legendary, especially that of twenty-three-year-old Hannah Senesh, the author of the beloved Hebrew song “Eli, Eli.” Their story would become one of the young state of Israel’s founding myths—but what exactly was the mission, and what had the parachutists actually accomplished? 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 Using thousands of original documents from once-secret files, manuscripts, memoirs, and unpublished letters, Matti Friedman follows four of the parachutists from the spring of 1944 to the operation’s dramatic end that winter. In Out of the Sky, he tells the gripping and surprising tale of a forgotten moment, demonstrating how storytelling itself can have a power even greater than warfare. And in exploring the line between myth and reality, heroism and futility, he creates an argument that has resonance in our own time. 

About Matti Friedman

Matti Friedman's 2016 book Pumpkinflowers was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book and as one of Amazon's 10 Best Books of the Year. It was selected as one of the year's best by Booklist, Mother Jones, Foreign Affairs, the National Post, and the Globe and Mail. His first book, The Aleppo Codex, won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize, the ALA's Sophie Brody Medal, and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for history. A former Associated Press correspondent, Friedman has reported from Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Washington, D.C., and his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. Friedman grew up in Toronto and now lives with his family in Jerusalem.


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