What do you think?
Rate this book
Suche liebevollen Menschen: Mein Vater, sieben Kinder, und ihre Flucht vor dem Holocaust
In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out adverts offering their children into the safe keeping of readers of a British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. The right words in the right order could mean the difference between life and death. Eighty-three years later, Guardian journalist Julian Borger comes across the advert that saved his father, Robert, from the Nazis. Robert had kept this a secret, like almost everything else about his traumatic Viennese childhood, until he took his own life.
Drawn to the shadows of his family's past and starting with nothing but a page of newspaper adverts, Borger traces the remarkable stories of his father, the other advertised children and their families, each thrown into the maelstrom of a world at war. From a Viennese radio shop to the Shanghai ghetto, internment camps and family homes across Britain, the deep forests and concentration camps of Nazi Germany, smugglers saving Jewish lives in Holland, an improbable French Resistance cell, and a redemptive story of survival in New York, Borger unearths the astonishing journeys of the children at the hands of fate, their stories of trauma and the kindness of strangers.
I Seek a Kind Person is a gripping family memoir of grief, courage and hope, connecting us with multiple generations, distant continents and the hidden histories of our almost unimaginable past.
Drawn to the shadows of his family's past and starting with nothing but a page of newspaper adverts, Borger traces the remarkable stories of his father, the other advertised children and their families, each thrown into the maelstrom of a world at war. From a Viennese radio shop to the Shanghai ghetto, internment camps and family homes across Britain, the deep forests and concentration camps of Nazi Germany, smugglers saving Jewish lives in Holland, an improbable French Resistance cell, and a redemptive story of survival in New York, Borger unearths the astonishing journeys of the children at the hands of fate, their stories of trauma and the kindness of strangers.
I Seek a Kind Person is a gripping family memoir of grief, courage and hope, connecting us with multiple generations, distant continents and the hidden histories of our almost unimaginable past.
308 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2024
557 people are currently reading
4868 people want to read
About the author
Julian Borger
5 books19 followersJulian Borger is a British journalist and non-fiction writer. He is the world affairs editor at The Guardian. He was a correspondent in the US, eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Balkans and covered the Bosnian War for the BBC. Borger is a contributor to Center of International Cooperation.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 175 reviews
Read
June 16, 2025In August 0f 1938 a series of ads ran in the Manchester Guardian (today The Guardian). One read:"Fervent prayer in great distress. --Who would give a Home to a grammar school scholar aged 13: healthy, clever, very musical." Another wrote of "Two very modest Sisters, aged 14 and 17," adding they are"half orphaned, well trained." A third: "I Seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent Boy, aged 11, Viennese good family."
These ads, and many others, had a number of things in common. They all listed reply addresses in Vienna. They were all seeking places for children. And they were all posted by Jewish parents desperate to get their children out of Austria, which had since March of that year been absorbed as part of the Nazi Reich.
One of the ads -- the solicitation for a "kind person" -- was sent by author Julian Borger's grandparents. The "intelligent" 11 year old was his father, Robert. Julian grew up knowing, as he puts it, "the bare skeleton" of his father's story: that he had left Vienna as a child and had been taken in by a Welsh family. Beyond that, he didn't know much. His relationship with his father was strained, so he didn't care to go any further. That changed in September 1983 when Julian came home from a dentist appointment to find his mother sitting at the kitchen table speaking with a young policeman who had come to her with sad news: her husband, Julian's father, had killed himself.
In this book, Julian, now himself with The Guardian as its diplomatic editor, writes of how he came to find himself seeking to track down the children in those ads to see what became of them and, as far as he was able to discover, to their parents. Some of the children came to England, a few to the United States, and one to Shanghai. Some were old enough that they could enlist in the army fighting against the Nazis. One was, at 91, still alive and spoke of “memories still intact of the world my dad had been born into, the place I had been straining to imagine.”
As one might imagine, it's a heart-wrenching book. The ads were placed during a very small time frame when mail cold be sent back and forth between Austria and England and it was still possible to get the children out of the Nazi-ruled country. The parents were desperate. They saw what was coming (the ads ran only a short time before Kristallnacht demonstrated how dire their situation was). Somehow they were able to come up with the funds to get their children out. And likely even more difficult, to find within themselves the ability to send their children off on their own to live with strangers in a foreign country who spoke a different language.
Most of the parents and other relatives perished, either in camps, shot in forests, or in circumstances for which there was no documentation. Most of the children were themselves now dead: many decades had passed since they last saw their parents. Somehow, Borger was able to locate the descendants of those children, or letters or memoirs written by the children. We learn in the book where some of the children settled (for good and ill), how they adapted or didn't, what impact the experience had on them. Of how it left them living their lives with "a feeling of distrust, not just in people but in a wider national community." Of growing up with in a condition of what one of the children later described as “ 'slow orphanhood' living with the steadily growing probability of their family’s death for years before it was finally confirmed, with a letter listing names, dates and places of death."
Of the "the guilt of continuing to live while 'the thread of their lives has been severed.' " It was, in some cases, complicated, this guilt. They had lost their families but they had gotten out. They had trouble being seen as Holocaust survivors. As one of the children later put it, “We did not suffer from cold and hunger and therefore our suffering does not come close to the suffering of the children of the ghettos and camps."
Another always feeling a deep emotional conflict as she tried to balance gratitude at her survival, sadness at the loss of her parents, and a measure of anger that they sent her away rather than letting her stay so they could meet their fate together as a family.
Some came to view their parents not as victims but as saviors because of their horrible sacrifice. Others felt the burden of carrying this kind of sadness within them and not being able to speak about it. Or, in a few cases, going back to Vienna after the war and running into former classmates who had beaten them or spit on them and who now greeted them with smiles as if they were old friends.
The act of researching the book, Borger says, uncovered a lot of hidden resentment against his father. But also gave him some insight into his father's mind. And his own, and what he would do -- emotionally -- with what he'd learned. “The past can trap you if you spend too much time there," he writes, "or control you if you spend too little. Floating between the two is some sort of freedom and happiness. It is a place our dad did not manage to find.”
Writing "I Seek" gave him a perspective he'd certainly never know had he not looked at those ads and traced those children. I grew up somehow thinking my family had miraculously survived the Holocaust without loss. That was not true at all. It was just that those who had perished... were never talked about. Their lives were never recounted and their pictures did not hang on our walls... As children, we had been among people who daily supported the weight of unmentionable loss. Our family discovered something that any Viennese psychotherapist could have told us: Those burdens grow heavier and darker the more you try to ignore them.
I find myself unwilling to assign a star value to this book. I'm not certain what any number I chose would signify. So I won't.
A short postscript: A dear friend of mine got out of Nazi Germany with the Kindertransport. She was only 2 years old. (One of her sisters was sent to live with a family in Scotland. While she was there her foster father was arrested: He was a spy for the Nazis.) She was later to learn that her parents were killed at Auschwitz on the day of their arrival in August 1942. I thought of my friend often while I was reading "I Seek." As a parent, I can only begin to imagine the awful anguish of having to send your child away to another country, not knowing when you might see them again. If you'd ever see them again. I can't presume to say that reading "I Seek" might have given me some small insight to what my friend has had to wrestle with.
These ads, and many others, had a number of things in common. They all listed reply addresses in Vienna. They were all seeking places for children. And they were all posted by Jewish parents desperate to get their children out of Austria, which had since March of that year been absorbed as part of the Nazi Reich.
One of the ads -- the solicitation for a "kind person" -- was sent by author Julian Borger's grandparents. The "intelligent" 11 year old was his father, Robert. Julian grew up knowing, as he puts it, "the bare skeleton" of his father's story: that he had left Vienna as a child and had been taken in by a Welsh family. Beyond that, he didn't know much. His relationship with his father was strained, so he didn't care to go any further. That changed in September 1983 when Julian came home from a dentist appointment to find his mother sitting at the kitchen table speaking with a young policeman who had come to her with sad news: her husband, Julian's father, had killed himself.
In this book, Julian, now himself with The Guardian as its diplomatic editor, writes of how he came to find himself seeking to track down the children in those ads to see what became of them and, as far as he was able to discover, to their parents. Some of the children came to England, a few to the United States, and one to Shanghai. Some were old enough that they could enlist in the army fighting against the Nazis. One was, at 91, still alive and spoke of “memories still intact of the world my dad had been born into, the place I had been straining to imagine.”
As one might imagine, it's a heart-wrenching book. The ads were placed during a very small time frame when mail cold be sent back and forth between Austria and England and it was still possible to get the children out of the Nazi-ruled country. The parents were desperate. They saw what was coming (the ads ran only a short time before Kristallnacht demonstrated how dire their situation was). Somehow they were able to come up with the funds to get their children out. And likely even more difficult, to find within themselves the ability to send their children off on their own to live with strangers in a foreign country who spoke a different language.
Most of the parents and other relatives perished, either in camps, shot in forests, or in circumstances for which there was no documentation. Most of the children were themselves now dead: many decades had passed since they last saw their parents. Somehow, Borger was able to locate the descendants of those children, or letters or memoirs written by the children. We learn in the book where some of the children settled (for good and ill), how they adapted or didn't, what impact the experience had on them. Of how it left them living their lives with "a feeling of distrust, not just in people but in a wider national community." Of growing up with in a condition of what one of the children later described as “ 'slow orphanhood' living with the steadily growing probability of their family’s death for years before it was finally confirmed, with a letter listing names, dates and places of death."
Of the "the guilt of continuing to live while 'the thread of their lives has been severed.' " It was, in some cases, complicated, this guilt. They had lost their families but they had gotten out. They had trouble being seen as Holocaust survivors. As one of the children later put it, “We did not suffer from cold and hunger and therefore our suffering does not come close to the suffering of the children of the ghettos and camps."
Another always feeling a deep emotional conflict as she tried to balance gratitude at her survival, sadness at the loss of her parents, and a measure of anger that they sent her away rather than letting her stay so they could meet their fate together as a family.
Some came to view their parents not as victims but as saviors because of their horrible sacrifice. Others felt the burden of carrying this kind of sadness within them and not being able to speak about it. Or, in a few cases, going back to Vienna after the war and running into former classmates who had beaten them or spit on them and who now greeted them with smiles as if they were old friends.
The act of researching the book, Borger says, uncovered a lot of hidden resentment against his father. But also gave him some insight into his father's mind. And his own, and what he would do -- emotionally -- with what he'd learned. “The past can trap you if you spend too much time there," he writes, "or control you if you spend too little. Floating between the two is some sort of freedom and happiness. It is a place our dad did not manage to find.”
Writing "I Seek" gave him a perspective he'd certainly never know had he not looked at those ads and traced those children. I grew up somehow thinking my family had miraculously survived the Holocaust without loss. That was not true at all. It was just that those who had perished... were never talked about. Their lives were never recounted and their pictures did not hang on our walls... As children, we had been among people who daily supported the weight of unmentionable loss. Our family discovered something that any Viennese psychotherapist could have told us: Those burdens grow heavier and darker the more you try to ignore them.
I find myself unwilling to assign a star value to this book. I'm not certain what any number I chose would signify. So I won't.
A short postscript: A dear friend of mine got out of Nazi Germany with the Kindertransport. She was only 2 years old. (One of her sisters was sent to live with a family in Scotland. While she was there her foster father was arrested: He was a spy for the Nazis.) She was later to learn that her parents were killed at Auschwitz on the day of their arrival in August 1942. I thought of my friend often while I was reading "I Seek." As a parent, I can only begin to imagine the awful anguish of having to send your child away to another country, not knowing when you might see them again. If you'd ever see them again. I can't presume to say that reading "I Seek" might have given me some small insight to what my friend has had to wrestle with.
May 1, 2024
interesting book about a horrid part of humanity history . the book started off with adverts in the Manchester Guardian in 1938 from families in Vienna and this book charts the author own father history plus those of the other children who were also advertised. part memoir and part social history
March 31, 2024
This is a must read for everyone. So deeply moving. Please read it. The author tracks down the children in the adverts and tells their stories through the best detective work. This leads to the most amazing encounters and history told from a different point of view. ‘Part memoir, part detective story… profoundly affecting’.
‘Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.’
‘Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.’
June 17, 2025
While it is always fascinating to read the stories of those who experienced the Holocaust and the events leading up to it, this book suffered for want of a good editor. The timeline of the stories jumps around and it is hard to keep track of who he is talking about as he often intertwines the stories. The author also tends to go off on tangents unrelated to the stories of the children in the adverts.
December 28, 2024
Der Ausgangspunkt des Sachbuchs sind Kleinanzeigen, die verzweifelte jüdische Eltern aus Wien 1938 im »Manchester Guardian« schalteten, um Pflegefamilien für ihre Kinder im Ausland zu finden und sie so vor den Nazis zu retten. Eine dieser Anzeigen führt den Autor Julian Borger zu einer sehr persönlichen Entdeckung: Ein Name in einer Anzeige ist der seines eigenen Vaters, Robert Borger.
Das Buch verwebt zwei Erzählstränge: Einerseits folgt man der journalistischen Recherche Borgers, der tief in das Familiengeheimnis eintaucht, das ihn selbst und seinen Vater betrifft, der zu seinen Lebzeiten jedoch nicht über die Vergangenheit gesprochen hatte. Andererseits widmet sich der Autor den Lebensgeschichten von weiteren Wiener Kindern, die durch ähnliche Anzeigen ins Exil geschickt wurden.
Die Stärke des Buches liegt in seiner Mischung aus historischer Recherche und persönlichem Zugang. Die Erzählung ist flüssig und einfühlsam, was sicher auch der gelungenen Übersetzung von Hainer Kober zu verdanken ist. Besonders berührend sind die Schicksale der Kinder, die Borger mit großer Sorgfalt nachzeichnet, um verdrängte Vergangenheit ans Licht zu holen und sich auch selbst besser kennenzulernen. Gleichzeitig habe ich viel über Wien als jüdische Stadt gelernt.
„Suche liebevollen Menschen“ von Julian Borger ist damit insgesamt ein gelungenes, eindringliches und durch den Verlag mit Fotos auch ansprechend gestaltetes Sachbuch, das die Verbrechen der Nazis ans Licht bringt und zugleich die Kraft der Menschlichkeit und den Mut zur Erinnerung zeigt. Ich habe das Buch gerne gelesen und finde, es sollte gerade jetzt viel mehr Leser:innen finden.
Das Buch verwebt zwei Erzählstränge: Einerseits folgt man der journalistischen Recherche Borgers, der tief in das Familiengeheimnis eintaucht, das ihn selbst und seinen Vater betrifft, der zu seinen Lebzeiten jedoch nicht über die Vergangenheit gesprochen hatte. Andererseits widmet sich der Autor den Lebensgeschichten von weiteren Wiener Kindern, die durch ähnliche Anzeigen ins Exil geschickt wurden.
Die Stärke des Buches liegt in seiner Mischung aus historischer Recherche und persönlichem Zugang. Die Erzählung ist flüssig und einfühlsam, was sicher auch der gelungenen Übersetzung von Hainer Kober zu verdanken ist. Besonders berührend sind die Schicksale der Kinder, die Borger mit großer Sorgfalt nachzeichnet, um verdrängte Vergangenheit ans Licht zu holen und sich auch selbst besser kennenzulernen. Gleichzeitig habe ich viel über Wien als jüdische Stadt gelernt.
„Suche liebevollen Menschen“ von Julian Borger ist damit insgesamt ein gelungenes, eindringliches und durch den Verlag mit Fotos auch ansprechend gestaltetes Sachbuch, das die Verbrechen der Nazis ans Licht bringt und zugleich die Kraft der Menschlichkeit und den Mut zur Erinnerung zeigt. Ich habe das Buch gerne gelesen und finde, es sollte gerade jetzt viel mehr Leser:innen finden.
February 22, 2025
One of the best non-fiction books I‘ve ever read. So informative, emotional and gripping.
August 21, 2024
This book has had a big impact on me. The individual stories of young Jewish children who survived World War II are highly moving. They survived because their parents made the decision to put an ad in an English newspaper to ask for a safe home for their kids, in the run up to the ‘Anschluss’ of Austria to the Third Reich.
The writer followed his fathers trails and of the other ‘ad children’, after his father took his own life.
Was I under the impression to be able to relate to the horror the Jews went through, this book proved me wrong: it was even worse.
The writer followed his fathers trails and of the other ‘ad children’, after his father took his own life.
Was I under the impression to be able to relate to the horror the Jews went through, this book proved me wrong: it was even worse.
June 16, 2025
A Holocaust account with a difference. The author, a prize-winning journalist who reported for the Guardian on the war in Yugoslavia and the subsequent hunt for war criminals, used those investigative skills to uncover his father’s past as a Holocaust survivor, and not only that, but as as an 11-year-old boy who’d been whisked out of Vienna just in time on the strength of a classified ad placed in the Guardian by his parents asking for British foster parents willing to take in their boy. When the author got a copy of that page of adverts, he saw several others from Vienna similarly asking for a place in England for their teenage children, and this book is the result of tracking down the histories of those children (as the subtitle helpfully suggests). Those parents were surely desperate to get their children out of Vienna after Hitler’s Austrian annexation, and it was increasingly difficult to get visas of any kind, so this was a last-ditch effort. But imagine their position, sending off a child with no certainty they’d be able to follow. “‘In the end, the story of a life is a story of contingencies’ … and that was true for many of the children from the classified ads. Once torn away from their moorings, they were carried along in the torrent of life in wartime.” The author follows the paths of seven of those children. Beyond interesting.
June 18, 2025
This remarkable book opens with a difficult loss: Julian Borger’s father took his own life when Julian was in his early twenties. For years, Julian was understandably angry and resentful. Then in 2020 a story he was working on for the British newspaper the Guardian brought him in contact with a woman who mentioned that her father had escaped 1938 Vienna due to a classified ad her grandparents had placed in what was then the Manchester Guardian. Julian began to research the ads desperately placed by Jewish parents at that time trying to get their children out of Austria post Anschluss. Thanks to help with Guardian archives he found the ad that helped his father end up in a Welsh household.
This book is a complex but fascinating reckoning with the stories of holocaust survivors and their children’s and grandchildren’s challenges to understand what happened to their lost relatives as well as the ones who struggled to explain what they experienced. Bolger illuminates incredible stories of other families even as he describes more of what his father faced in living with survivor guilt. The harrowing things parents confronted and the courage they showed giving up their children just walloped me emotionally. It is an absolutely astonishing book and I’m so thankful to have read it.
This book is a complex but fascinating reckoning with the stories of holocaust survivors and their children’s and grandchildren’s challenges to understand what happened to their lost relatives as well as the ones who struggled to explain what they experienced. Bolger illuminates incredible stories of other families even as he describes more of what his father faced in living with survivor guilt. The harrowing things parents confronted and the courage they showed giving up their children just walloped me emotionally. It is an absolutely astonishing book and I’m so thankful to have read it.
January 17, 2024
I admit that the somewhat unusual title of Borger’s book attracted me. What I found was an intriguing detective story revealing how Borger’s father’s history as a Jewish child in Vienna in 1938 may have played its part in his eventual suicide decades later. The author discovered that a group of seven Jewish children in Vienna, including his father, were “advertised” by their parents in a British newspaper, hoping that the kindness of British readers would motivate them to give their child “a future” by bringing him/her to England to escape the war and the persecution and annihilation of Jews by the Nazis.
In “set[ting] out to follow his [father’s] elusive footprints”, Borger began his investigation into their journeys, each of whom he traced into adulthood to find out how their lives and those of their eventual families were impacted by the bravery of their parents in relinquishing them and by the kindness of those who took them into their lives in Britain. The evidence of intergenerational trauma within the survivors and their families was no surprise and was covered with sensitivity by the author.
The research was compelling, though often confusing as Borger moved from one child’s narrative to the next, often finding connections between them regarding place or time. Although undoubtedly these children were saved by the actions of those who took them into their homes, they all experienced forms of sadness, grief, and dislocation as they navigated their new lives without their families of origin. Those who never saw their parents again often suffered guilt for having been saved. His father’s suicide highlighted the pain that plagued many of them, although he was the only one who took his life.
In “set[ting] out to follow his [father’s] elusive footprints”, Borger began his investigation into their journeys, each of whom he traced into adulthood to find out how their lives and those of their eventual families were impacted by the bravery of their parents in relinquishing them and by the kindness of those who took them into their lives in Britain. The evidence of intergenerational trauma within the survivors and their families was no surprise and was covered with sensitivity by the author.
The research was compelling, though often confusing as Borger moved from one child’s narrative to the next, often finding connections between them regarding place or time. Although undoubtedly these children were saved by the actions of those who took them into their homes, they all experienced forms of sadness, grief, and dislocation as they navigated their new lives without their families of origin. Those who never saw their parents again often suffered guilt for having been saved. His father’s suicide highlighted the pain that plagued many of them, although he was the only one who took his life.
January 3, 2025
I was intrigued by the title of this book & when I read that the words related to a 23 word, 3 line advertisement placed in the Manchester Guardian by a desperate Austrian Jewish father in 3rd August 1938, I simply had to read more. Julian Borger, a British journalist, had only scant knowledge of his 11 year old father’s escape from Germany occupied Austria to the safety of Wales & the love & care of two absolutely heroic people in Nans & Reg Bingley
His father’s suicide in 1983 was seen by Nans as his being another of Hitler’s victims but it wasn’t till 2020 that Borger learnt of the advertisement. What followed was initially a short Guardian article & then the amazing detective work to find out about the seven lives that were saved by their families also putting an advertisement in that newspaper. He very skilfully recounts their lives in many far flung places. Of particular note was his interview with the last living child, Lisbeth Weiss Ruderman, who was a 90 year old, living in the USA. Her memories of life in Vienna are heartbreaking especially as her parents did not survive. His father was a noted psychologist yet he did not understand the damage that had been wrought upon his psyche by the trauma of his escape. The way the children coped as they became adults was as different as each of them. Some hid their memories from anyone whilst others championed their lost relatives. I thank Julian Borger for bringing to light a little known fact about Holocaust survivors in the UK.
His father’s suicide in 1983 was seen by Nans as his being another of Hitler’s victims but it wasn’t till 2020 that Borger learnt of the advertisement. What followed was initially a short Guardian article & then the amazing detective work to find out about the seven lives that were saved by their families also putting an advertisement in that newspaper. He very skilfully recounts their lives in many far flung places. Of particular note was his interview with the last living child, Lisbeth Weiss Ruderman, who was a 90 year old, living in the USA. Her memories of life in Vienna are heartbreaking especially as her parents did not survive. His father was a noted psychologist yet he did not understand the damage that had been wrought upon his psyche by the trauma of his escape. The way the children coped as they became adults was as different as each of them. Some hid their memories from anyone whilst others championed their lost relatives. I thank Julian Borger for bringing to light a little known fact about Holocaust survivors in the UK.
November 26, 2025
4+ stars
A very insightful and moving book that focused on Viennese children whose parents saved them from the Holocaust by placing ads in the Manchester Guardian in 1938. I was very affected by their stories and experiences.
A very insightful and moving book that focused on Viennese children whose parents saved them from the Holocaust by placing ads in the Manchester Guardian in 1938. I was very affected by their stories and experiences.
September 16, 2024
Review in exchance for an Advance Reader's Copy. Trigger warnings: suicide, antisemitism, genocide, violence, adoption.
Many of us know about the Kindertransport, but I doubt any of us have heard about the Guardian newspaper advertisements to place Jewish children in Manchester homes. After his father takes his own life, Borger decides to learn more about him by investigating his and the surrounding advertisements. Along the way, we discover suppressed atrocities, like Britain's internment and deportation of Jewish refugees (pages 120-121), and Austria's complicity and victim mentality regarding their wartime actions (pages 223 and 233).
We also discover acts of courage, like Ho Feng-Shan's generous dispensation of visas for Shanghai (pages 134-135). China may seem like an unusual place for a Jewish community, but there were two great Iraqi Jewish dynasties, the Sassoons and the Kadoories, whose immigration in the nineteenth century started it all. "The influence of the Sassoons and the Kadoories made Shanghai the stuff of legend for Jews fleeing pogroms. They provided jobs, housing, education and social services, although this newly established community was kept at arm's length socially by the two families, who saw themselves as part of the British establishment and distinct from the Russian Jews by class and language." (page 141) Unfortunately, this peace was not to last. When Japan signed a pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940 it was bound to evict the Jews from its newly acquired city. The Japanese couldn't stomach the German enthusiasm for genocide though, balking at solutions like sinking an entire ship of people.
Then there were the acts of active defiance, such as the Austrian Jewish resistence movement, and the Ritchie Boys. The latter included 11,000 German-speaking soldiers, 2,000 of whom were Jewish. They were considered cutting-edge assets, "...providing more than sixty percent of the actionable intelligence gathered on the battlefield in Europe." (page 212)
After all of this investigation, Borger meditates on our understanding of the war. "The view of the Anschluss as being an act of Austrian martyrdom was in decline, along with the belief that the country had been Hitler's first victim." (page 233) Vienna's Jewish past is now honored with a memorial inscribed with the names of all 64,450 murdered Jews. A German artist, Gunter Demnig, has also inlaid brass cobbles marking the addresses of formerly Jewish homes. There's still the question of whether children, such as Borger's father, can be considered Holocaust survivors though. Many feel betrayed by their homeland, fully understanding how the "...refugee's curse is to be from two places at once and none at the same time," (page 25) but still acknowledge that they did not encounter anything like the atrocities in the death camps.
Of course, there is no simple answer to a suicide. Borger is frustrated by his limited understanding of his father's struggles, and closes by describing his father's last day. In particular, his last attempt to reach out to "...Nans, who had known him as he had arrived in Britain, a terrified eleven-year-old child." (page 263) Unfortunately, she isn't home, and her response to the suicide is that he was another one of Hitler's victims.
A very heavy book, but one that definitely offered a unique perspective on family preservation during the war. Would recommend for anyone interested in personal histories of World War II.
Many of us know about the Kindertransport, but I doubt any of us have heard about the Guardian newspaper advertisements to place Jewish children in Manchester homes. After his father takes his own life, Borger decides to learn more about him by investigating his and the surrounding advertisements. Along the way, we discover suppressed atrocities, like Britain's internment and deportation of Jewish refugees (pages 120-121), and Austria's complicity and victim mentality regarding their wartime actions (pages 223 and 233).
We also discover acts of courage, like Ho Feng-Shan's generous dispensation of visas for Shanghai (pages 134-135). China may seem like an unusual place for a Jewish community, but there were two great Iraqi Jewish dynasties, the Sassoons and the Kadoories, whose immigration in the nineteenth century started it all. "The influence of the Sassoons and the Kadoories made Shanghai the stuff of legend for Jews fleeing pogroms. They provided jobs, housing, education and social services, although this newly established community was kept at arm's length socially by the two families, who saw themselves as part of the British establishment and distinct from the Russian Jews by class and language." (page 141) Unfortunately, this peace was not to last. When Japan signed a pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940 it was bound to evict the Jews from its newly acquired city. The Japanese couldn't stomach the German enthusiasm for genocide though, balking at solutions like sinking an entire ship of people.
Then there were the acts of active defiance, such as the Austrian Jewish resistence movement, and the Ritchie Boys. The latter included 11,000 German-speaking soldiers, 2,000 of whom were Jewish. They were considered cutting-edge assets, "...providing more than sixty percent of the actionable intelligence gathered on the battlefield in Europe." (page 212)
After all of this investigation, Borger meditates on our understanding of the war. "The view of the Anschluss as being an act of Austrian martyrdom was in decline, along with the belief that the country had been Hitler's first victim." (page 233) Vienna's Jewish past is now honored with a memorial inscribed with the names of all 64,450 murdered Jews. A German artist, Gunter Demnig, has also inlaid brass cobbles marking the addresses of formerly Jewish homes. There's still the question of whether children, such as Borger's father, can be considered Holocaust survivors though. Many feel betrayed by their homeland, fully understanding how the "...refugee's curse is to be from two places at once and none at the same time," (page 25) but still acknowledge that they did not encounter anything like the atrocities in the death camps.
Of course, there is no simple answer to a suicide. Borger is frustrated by his limited understanding of his father's struggles, and closes by describing his father's last day. In particular, his last attempt to reach out to "...Nans, who had known him as he had arrived in Britain, a terrified eleven-year-old child." (page 263) Unfortunately, she isn't home, and her response to the suicide is that he was another one of Hitler's victims.
A very heavy book, but one that definitely offered a unique perspective on family preservation during the war. Would recommend for anyone interested in personal histories of World War II.
November 12, 2024
I had to stop reading this for a while and read something lighter because I found it really hard going which was probably to be expected considering the subject of the book. However it's a great book, although it feels wrong to use the word great to describe a book about such an awful atrocity. Its all the more harrowing because the horror gently seeps in, at the heart of it the book is a detective story of a man trying to find answers in his Father's backstory as to why he took his own life, but the backstory takes the author back to the horrors of the Holocaust and the long-lasting impact that had on the many Jewish people who lived through it.
It really is a book of many emotions, the horror of the reality of the Holocaust, the heart-warming kindness of strangers who tried to help, shock and disbelief that so many looked on as it happened and turned their backs and relief when people managed to escape/survive. This forms the core of the book - did they really manage to truly escape? Or did the horror that they had witnessed live with them the rest of their lives? Some carried with them the guilt of surviving when their family did not and all felt that the experience had impacted their decisions throughout their lives.
It was difficult at times to keep up with the volume of people focused on within the book and at times the stories intertwine, there are a lot of people each with individual backstories to remember and I felt that whilst each of their stories was unique and added something to the overall picture that the book either needed to be longer or some needed to have been edited out. I understand that due to the nature of the topic that this would be difficult to do because how do you decide what to edit out when each story is haunting in its own way? However it didn't help that when someone later changed their name the author would alternate between both names, this was particularly difficult when he would use interchangeably Erna, Omi and Grandmother to describe his Paternal Grandmother and I had to keep reminding myself of who the author was speaking about.
Highly recommended but be prepared for a harrowing read that will take you through a multitude of emotions.
It really is a book of many emotions, the horror of the reality of the Holocaust, the heart-warming kindness of strangers who tried to help, shock and disbelief that so many looked on as it happened and turned their backs and relief when people managed to escape/survive. This forms the core of the book - did they really manage to truly escape? Or did the horror that they had witnessed live with them the rest of their lives? Some carried with them the guilt of surviving when their family did not and all felt that the experience had impacted their decisions throughout their lives.
It was difficult at times to keep up with the volume of people focused on within the book and at times the stories intertwine, there are a lot of people each with individual backstories to remember and I felt that whilst each of their stories was unique and added something to the overall picture that the book either needed to be longer or some needed to have been edited out. I understand that due to the nature of the topic that this would be difficult to do because how do you decide what to edit out when each story is haunting in its own way? However it didn't help that when someone later changed their name the author would alternate between both names, this was particularly difficult when he would use interchangeably Erna, Omi and Grandmother to describe his Paternal Grandmother and I had to keep reminding myself of who the author was speaking about.
Highly recommended but be prepared for a harrowing read that will take you through a multitude of emotions.
January 23, 2024
There exists now a plethora of memoirs and research works that explore such a layered period in global history, so it takes a lot for a new work to feel it is adding something more to the collective consciousness. This book manages it.
While Borger is exploring his family's history, centring on his father, he seeks to provide context for the man's life from those who shared, in some small part, the experience. As such, this book weaves a complex tapestry of lives. It's well-informed, balanced and reflective. It is bleak and harrowing, whilst also tender and empathetic.
Yet, the book is periodically let down by the clarity of the writing. There are points of profoundly moving writing- the epilogue being a clear example of this- so it is by no means a consistent fault. However, there are times when the narrative is lost, either through jumping between so many individuals and their stories (there are a great many included), or by the whistlestop tour through historical events. It all adds to form a rich background for these stories, but does mean there's a lot covered in so few pages.
While Borger is exploring his family's history, centring on his father, he seeks to provide context for the man's life from those who shared, in some small part, the experience. As such, this book weaves a complex tapestry of lives. It's well-informed, balanced and reflective. It is bleak and harrowing, whilst also tender and empathetic.
Yet, the book is periodically let down by the clarity of the writing. There are points of profoundly moving writing- the epilogue being a clear example of this- so it is by no means a consistent fault. However, there are times when the narrative is lost, either through jumping between so many individuals and their stories (there are a great many included), or by the whistlestop tour through historical events. It all adds to form a rich background for these stories, but does mean there's a lot covered in so few pages.
January 27, 2025
A search for children for whom positions were sought in England in 1938, children of Austrian Jewish parents who wanted to find a safe haven for them.
Author Julian Borger searches records and unearths the history of at least seven children and their families, including his father and paternal grandparents.
Borger, a journalist, uses primary sources where possible to put together these histories of survival, escape from the Holocaust. In some cases, the children were not placed and either died in the Holocaust or managed to escape another way.
At times repetitive, it's an engaging genealogy and history of families torn apart by war, by hatred, and by bigotry not to mention Nazis.
I read an ARC so I don't know the final look, but the book would benefit from maps of England, Austria, and Europe in 1938/1939 and a "Further Reading" list.
I can see this book being used in a Holocaust studies class at from 9th grade through college and for adult education classes.
Thanks to the BookLoft of German Village (Columbus, OH) http://www.bookloft.com for an ARC to read and review.
Author Julian Borger searches records and unearths the history of at least seven children and their families, including his father and paternal grandparents.
Borger, a journalist, uses primary sources where possible to put together these histories of survival, escape from the Holocaust. In some cases, the children were not placed and either died in the Holocaust or managed to escape another way.
At times repetitive, it's an engaging genealogy and history of families torn apart by war, by hatred, and by bigotry not to mention Nazis.
I read an ARC so I don't know the final look, but the book would benefit from maps of England, Austria, and Europe in 1938/1939 and a "Further Reading" list.
I can see this book being used in a Holocaust studies class at from 9th grade through college and for adult education classes.
Thanks to the BookLoft of German Village (Columbus, OH) http://www.bookloft.com for an ARC to read and review.
June 21, 2025
Astounding
Beautifully rendered. Borger balances impressive research with the unveiling of his family trauma, and I found myself frequently moved by his subjects’ lives and his own meditations. Highly recommend.
Beautifully rendered. Borger balances impressive research with the unveiling of his family trauma, and I found myself frequently moved by his subjects’ lives and his own meditations. Highly recommend.
August 16, 2025
The title is the first part of the ad placed in an Austrian newspaper by the grandfather of the author in 1938. The author’s father took his life by suicide when the author was in his early 20s. Angry about this for years, he crosses paths with a woman in 2020 while working for a British newspaper who tells him that her father escaped Austria after her father placed a classified ad in a British paper. His research leads him to the ad that got his father out of Austria and placed in a Welsh household along with the ads for other Jewish children. So begins a complex narrative: there is a lot of Austrian history that might have benefited from some good editing. Each story is complex: the challenge of trying to find out what happened to family members during WWII, the guilt and trauma of surviving, the unfathomable bravery and hope that parents had in placing their children on a train, the emotional chaos of trying to forge a new life in Britain (or later the US), forget an old life, remember and grieve an old life - are all described in loving and painful detail. There is also ‘hidden’ information revealed (work camps and detainment camps I had never heard of before), the way many Austrians viewed themselves, their history and the Jews from their community - all told from a few viewpoints. To be 9-15 years old when this happened clearly affects an entire life (and the lives of families/children). An important aspect of a little known part of the holocaust.
June 12, 2025
Imagine being separated from your family when you are 9 to 15 years old. Now imagine trying to assimilate in a new home, in a new country, with a new language. This happened to scores of young Jewish children being sent to England from Vienna be their parents in the 1930s.
It is amazing that these children found homes through classified ads placed in a London newspaper.
The adjustments are mixed, as Julian Borger discovers when he attempts to follow the lives of some of the people in the ads. Many of these refugees and orphans were brutalized or exploited. Even without the harsh treatment, adjustment was difficult. They were dependent on the good will of strangers and plain luck.
The book is interesting, albeit another heartbreaking story perpetrated by Nazi Germany leading up to and during World War II. The resulting trauma followed most of these people for years.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” James Baldwin
It is amazing that these children found homes through classified ads placed in a London newspaper.
The adjustments are mixed, as Julian Borger discovers when he attempts to follow the lives of some of the people in the ads. Many of these refugees and orphans were brutalized or exploited. Even without the harsh treatment, adjustment was difficult. They were dependent on the good will of strangers and plain luck.
The book is interesting, albeit another heartbreaking story perpetrated by Nazi Germany leading up to and during World War II. The resulting trauma followed most of these people for years.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” James Baldwin
October 9, 2025
A true story about how single acts of kindness can ripple through generations, but can't necessarily save everyone who physically escapes from evil. Julian Borger's book tells of a half dozen Viennese children saved by British families willing to take them in after the Anschluss, but also the tragic tale of his father, who, after being rescued by one such family, took his own life later--a psychological victim of Hitler.
Using the newspaper ad that initially saved his father from the Nazis as his starting point, Borger unearths the hidden histories of Jewish children who escaped Vienna in 1938 and the families who sheltered them. He blends investigative journalism with personal memoir, reconstructing a description of courage, loss, and survival across continents and decades.
Borger's remarkable book honors the fragility (and weight) of memory and the power of human decency in times of war.
Using the newspaper ad that initially saved his father from the Nazis as his starting point, Borger unearths the hidden histories of Jewish children who escaped Vienna in 1938 and the families who sheltered them. He blends investigative journalism with personal memoir, reconstructing a description of courage, loss, and survival across continents and decades.
Borger's remarkable book honors the fragility (and weight) of memory and the power of human decency in times of war.
May 22, 2025
The story of children forced to leave by unique advertisements in the Manchester Guardian to save their lives from the Nazis in Vienna, Austria. The holes left in their lives of losing families and the relocation to another country. The bravery of people who stepped forward to help those in most need. The feeling of loss and trying to fit in the new life.
It is a must read due to all that is going on in the world today.
It is a must read due to all that is going on in the world today.
December 23, 2025
It is hard to read a book about the holocaust without considering the parallels with the present time, and this book about the “lucky” children who were able (forced) to flee their hones hit especially hard. I thought this was a very well researched and well told story about specific children that helped me understand the kindertransport as I had not before. I found it easy to follow and thought that the list of individuals in the front was very helpful.
April 9, 2024
Very sad but a wonderful book
May 6, 2024
Considering the topic matters this book is very readable and well written. It will stay with me and remind me that we all need to help each other.
December 24, 2025
Well researched and written book on a little known aspect of the Holocaust.
March 14, 2025
A must read book most impressed so I
Imfofmative a nd moving sad and uplifting thank you !
Imfofmative a nd moving sad and uplifting thank you !
September 26, 2024
1938 war in der englischen Zeitung “The Manchester Guardian” eine schmale Anzeige zu lesen: “I seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent Boy, aged 11”. Ähnlich lautende Anzeigen standen daneben. Wer steckte hinter diesem Gesuch? Es war die Wiener Familie Borger, die auf dem Wege ihren Sohn Robert (gerufen Bobby) vor dem Zugriff der Nazis retten wollte.
Und tatsächlich, es hat gottseidank funktioniert. Mit Vermittlung des Jüdischen Netzwerkes gelangte Robert in die liebevolle Obhut von Mr and Mrs Bingley, einem Lehrerehepaar aus Nord Wales.
Es war ein längerer Weg, bis der spätere Sohn dieses elfjährigen „Bobby“, der Autor des vorgestellten Buches Julian Borger, diese und weitere Anzeigen fand. Julian Borger war früher Auslandskorrespondent, Kriegsberichterstatter und ist heute Leiter des Außenpolitik-Ressorts des »The Guardian«. 2014 wurden er und sein Team mit dem Pulitzer Preis ausgezeichnet. Er bringt also genug Erfahrungen mit, sich auf die Spuren der Vergangenheit zu begeben.
Als er 2021 diese Anzeige fand, war sein Vater längst verstorben, ohne viel über seine Kindheit gesprochen zu haben. Julian Borger begann das Leben seines Vaters zu recherchieren und stieß dabei auf viele Unterlagen und Informationen, über die er und seine Familie vorher nichts wussten. Auch das Schicksal der Kinder aus den anderen Anzeigen begann er in Zuge der Recherche zu erkunden. Gemeinsam war ihre Herkunft: Wien. Der Blick in das Wien des Jahres 1938 lässt uns erschüttern.
Es gab zwei kritische Daten, die als Warnung dienten, zum einen der „Anschluss“ am 13. März 1938: Hitlers Annexion Österreichs, und zum anderen die sogenannte „Kristallnacht“, das Pogrom am 9. und 10. November 1938, als die Nazi-Horden die Fenster jüdischer Häuser in Deutschland und Österreich einwarfen, jüdische Geschäfte, Synagogen, Privathäuser plünderten und brandschanzten, Menschen verprügelten, verhafteten, verschleppten und ermordeten. Fast alle von Wiens 22 Synagogen wurden dabei niedergebrannt. Als Mensch jüdischen Glaubens auf die Straße zu gehen, war ein Spießrutenlauf und lebensgefährlich.
Bobbys Vater Leo Borger versäumte keine Zeit und gab die Anzeige für seinen Sohn am 3. August 1938 auf. Daneben stand jene von Gertrude Langer, 14 Jahre alt. Ein anderer Junge, der 16jährige Siegfried Neumann musste dies selber tun, sein Vater wurde in Dachau ermordet.
Viele verzweifelte, vorausschauende jüdische Eltern versuchten, ihre Kinder vor den Nazis in Sicherheit zu bringen. Diese Anzeigen waren eine Möglichkeit, um den Kindern ein Überleben in der Fremde zu sichern. Ob man sich je wiedersehen würde, war ungewiss und unwahrscheinlich. Die letzte Hoffnung waren die bekannten Kindertransporte, die 1938 bis zum Kriegsausbruch 1939 Kinder in rettende Ausland bringen konnten.
Im Laufe des Buches stehen wir mit dem Autor in der Haupthalle des Wiener Westbahnhofs, von wo die Kindertransporte 1938/39 und auch die Reise von Bobby Borger begannen. Heute erinnert hier die Bronzestatue eines kleinen, ängstlichen jüdischen Jungen daran, der auf einem Koffer sitzt. Genau denselben schleppte auch der Vater des Autors durch den Bahnhof und sein späteres Leben.
Julian Borger brauchte noch den Trigger eines beruflichen Zusammentreffens mit einer Frau, die wie er Nachkomme eines dieser geflüchteten Kinder ist, um endlich die Suche aufzunehmen. Er kann neben der Geschichte seines Vaters auch die Spuren von sieben weiteren Kindern aufgreifen. Deren schicksalhaften Reisen von Wien aus führten nicht nur ins Vereinigte Königreich, sondern auch in die USA, nach Schanghai, auf dem Umweg über die Niederlande ins KZ.
Der Autor lässt uns erahnen, was es für die Eltern in jener Zeit bedeutete, sich von ihren Kindern zu trennen. Wie sie auf die britische Leserschaft hofften, den Kindern ein Überleben und eine Zukunft zu schenken. Was für ein Mut, ein Verzicht, Vertrauen und Verzweiflung.
Die Kinder selber wollten natürlich nicht von ihren Eltern getrennt werden. Aber sie waren alt genug, die Demütigungen und Verfolgungen auf den Straßen zu sehen und zu begreifen, dass sie gehen mussten. Ihre Kindheit fand ein jähes Ende.
Borger nimmt uns mit auf seine investigative Recherche, um die Lebensreisen der Kinder in ihr späteres Erwachsensein nachzuverfolgen. Glück hat er, wenn er auf Nachkommen stößt, die Auskünfte erteilen können, so dass er von der Gegenwart aus, in die Vergangenheit zurückgehen kann. Eine unerwartete Überraschung erlebt er, dass eines der gesuchten Kinder mit ihm hochbetagt über Skype noch sprechen konnte.
Was für ein Segen, dass es hilfsbereite britische Familien gab, die Kinder aufnahmen, als Familienmitglieder oder auch als günstige Arbeitskräfte. Sie wurden gerettet, mussten aber alle Formen von Traurigkeit, Kummer und Verzweiflung durchstehen. Sie verloren nicht selten die Orientierung, als sie durch ihre neuen Leben ohne Familien und Heimat hindurch navigieren mussten. Die meisten sahen ihre Familien nie wieder und litten an Schuldgefühlen, die einzigen Geretteten zu sein.
Borgers Familie war eher eine Ausnahme, da sich die Eltern auch noch England retten konnten, nachdem man in Wien ihnen ihre gesamte Existenz entrissen hatte. Aber jeder musste sich einzeln für sich durchschlagen, ein Zusammenleben war nicht erlaubt. Für Borgers Vater, aber auch für den Autor und seine Geschwister war die Ziehmutter Nan immer eine Bezugsperson. Sie konnte sich noch daran erinnern, wie der junge Bobby vor dem Geräusch des Wasserkessels Panik bekam, weil es für ihn wie das Pfeifen der Nazis anhörte, die ihn durch die Straßen jagten. In ihrem Ziehsohn sah sie nach seinem Selbstmord „das letzte Opfer der Nazis“.
Alle Kinder, deren Spuren Julian Borger verfolgt, haben Krieg und Holocaust überlebt. Doch der spätere Suizid von Bobby Borger, der nie mit der Familie über das Erlebte sprechen konnte, offenbart noch einmal die Wunden, die diese Erfahrungen geschlagen hatten. Die generationenübergreifenden Traumata der Überlebenden und Familien zeigt der Autor ebenfalls auf.
Fazit
Bereits das Cover ermöglicht den persönlichen Bezug zu den Menschen des Buches, denn es zeigt „Bobby“ Borger mit seinen Eltern und die rettende Anzeige.
Julian Borger schildert spannend und sehr informativ die Motive und die Vorgehensweise seiner Recherche. Nicht immer geht er dabei chronologisch vor, sondern zieht Verbindungen und Vergleiche.
Jedes Kapitel ist einer bestimmten Familie oder Kindern gewidmet. Bilder führen in den Text ein. Julian Borger versteht es, den Menschen über die er schreibt, eine Geschichte und ein Gesicht zu geben. Somit schenkt uns der Autor das Gefühl, dass wir die Menschen kennen.
Immer wieder verwebt er Zahlen und Fakten des Holocaust, schockierende und bewegende Elemente miteinander. Seine Art zu erzählen und zu erklären lassen die Zeit, die beteiligten Menschen und das Geschehen lebendig werden. Man spürt die Angst in der Verzweiflung und Düsternis aber auch den unendlichen Mut und die Liebe.
In unseren Zeiten, in denen in Zügen aus der Ukraine flüchtende Familien mit Kindern sitzen, Zeiten, in denen solche Geschehnisse verdrängt, abgeleugnet und verharmlost werden, Zeiten, in denen wieder die gleichen Sprüche gegrölt und Gesten offen gezeigt werden , Zeiten, in denen Menschen bedenkenlos rechtsextreme und stalinistische Parteien wählen, sind solche Bücher dringend nötig.
Ich kann dieses spannende, bewegende, rührende, aufrüttelnde Buch nur jedem empfehlen. Es hat eine leider nur zu große Aktualität.
Und tatsächlich, es hat gottseidank funktioniert. Mit Vermittlung des Jüdischen Netzwerkes gelangte Robert in die liebevolle Obhut von Mr and Mrs Bingley, einem Lehrerehepaar aus Nord Wales.
Es war ein längerer Weg, bis der spätere Sohn dieses elfjährigen „Bobby“, der Autor des vorgestellten Buches Julian Borger, diese und weitere Anzeigen fand. Julian Borger war früher Auslandskorrespondent, Kriegsberichterstatter und ist heute Leiter des Außenpolitik-Ressorts des »The Guardian«. 2014 wurden er und sein Team mit dem Pulitzer Preis ausgezeichnet. Er bringt also genug Erfahrungen mit, sich auf die Spuren der Vergangenheit zu begeben.
Als er 2021 diese Anzeige fand, war sein Vater längst verstorben, ohne viel über seine Kindheit gesprochen zu haben. Julian Borger begann das Leben seines Vaters zu recherchieren und stieß dabei auf viele Unterlagen und Informationen, über die er und seine Familie vorher nichts wussten. Auch das Schicksal der Kinder aus den anderen Anzeigen begann er in Zuge der Recherche zu erkunden. Gemeinsam war ihre Herkunft: Wien. Der Blick in das Wien des Jahres 1938 lässt uns erschüttern.
Es gab zwei kritische Daten, die als Warnung dienten, zum einen der „Anschluss“ am 13. März 1938: Hitlers Annexion Österreichs, und zum anderen die sogenannte „Kristallnacht“, das Pogrom am 9. und 10. November 1938, als die Nazi-Horden die Fenster jüdischer Häuser in Deutschland und Österreich einwarfen, jüdische Geschäfte, Synagogen, Privathäuser plünderten und brandschanzten, Menschen verprügelten, verhafteten, verschleppten und ermordeten. Fast alle von Wiens 22 Synagogen wurden dabei niedergebrannt. Als Mensch jüdischen Glaubens auf die Straße zu gehen, war ein Spießrutenlauf und lebensgefährlich.
Bobbys Vater Leo Borger versäumte keine Zeit und gab die Anzeige für seinen Sohn am 3. August 1938 auf. Daneben stand jene von Gertrude Langer, 14 Jahre alt. Ein anderer Junge, der 16jährige Siegfried Neumann musste dies selber tun, sein Vater wurde in Dachau ermordet.
Viele verzweifelte, vorausschauende jüdische Eltern versuchten, ihre Kinder vor den Nazis in Sicherheit zu bringen. Diese Anzeigen waren eine Möglichkeit, um den Kindern ein Überleben in der Fremde zu sichern. Ob man sich je wiedersehen würde, war ungewiss und unwahrscheinlich. Die letzte Hoffnung waren die bekannten Kindertransporte, die 1938 bis zum Kriegsausbruch 1939 Kinder in rettende Ausland bringen konnten.
Im Laufe des Buches stehen wir mit dem Autor in der Haupthalle des Wiener Westbahnhofs, von wo die Kindertransporte 1938/39 und auch die Reise von Bobby Borger begannen. Heute erinnert hier die Bronzestatue eines kleinen, ängstlichen jüdischen Jungen daran, der auf einem Koffer sitzt. Genau denselben schleppte auch der Vater des Autors durch den Bahnhof und sein späteres Leben.
Julian Borger brauchte noch den Trigger eines beruflichen Zusammentreffens mit einer Frau, die wie er Nachkomme eines dieser geflüchteten Kinder ist, um endlich die Suche aufzunehmen. Er kann neben der Geschichte seines Vaters auch die Spuren von sieben weiteren Kindern aufgreifen. Deren schicksalhaften Reisen von Wien aus führten nicht nur ins Vereinigte Königreich, sondern auch in die USA, nach Schanghai, auf dem Umweg über die Niederlande ins KZ.
Der Autor lässt uns erahnen, was es für die Eltern in jener Zeit bedeutete, sich von ihren Kindern zu trennen. Wie sie auf die britische Leserschaft hofften, den Kindern ein Überleben und eine Zukunft zu schenken. Was für ein Mut, ein Verzicht, Vertrauen und Verzweiflung.
Die Kinder selber wollten natürlich nicht von ihren Eltern getrennt werden. Aber sie waren alt genug, die Demütigungen und Verfolgungen auf den Straßen zu sehen und zu begreifen, dass sie gehen mussten. Ihre Kindheit fand ein jähes Ende.
Borger nimmt uns mit auf seine investigative Recherche, um die Lebensreisen der Kinder in ihr späteres Erwachsensein nachzuverfolgen. Glück hat er, wenn er auf Nachkommen stößt, die Auskünfte erteilen können, so dass er von der Gegenwart aus, in die Vergangenheit zurückgehen kann. Eine unerwartete Überraschung erlebt er, dass eines der gesuchten Kinder mit ihm hochbetagt über Skype noch sprechen konnte.
Was für ein Segen, dass es hilfsbereite britische Familien gab, die Kinder aufnahmen, als Familienmitglieder oder auch als günstige Arbeitskräfte. Sie wurden gerettet, mussten aber alle Formen von Traurigkeit, Kummer und Verzweiflung durchstehen. Sie verloren nicht selten die Orientierung, als sie durch ihre neuen Leben ohne Familien und Heimat hindurch navigieren mussten. Die meisten sahen ihre Familien nie wieder und litten an Schuldgefühlen, die einzigen Geretteten zu sein.
Borgers Familie war eher eine Ausnahme, da sich die Eltern auch noch England retten konnten, nachdem man in Wien ihnen ihre gesamte Existenz entrissen hatte. Aber jeder musste sich einzeln für sich durchschlagen, ein Zusammenleben war nicht erlaubt. Für Borgers Vater, aber auch für den Autor und seine Geschwister war die Ziehmutter Nan immer eine Bezugsperson. Sie konnte sich noch daran erinnern, wie der junge Bobby vor dem Geräusch des Wasserkessels Panik bekam, weil es für ihn wie das Pfeifen der Nazis anhörte, die ihn durch die Straßen jagten. In ihrem Ziehsohn sah sie nach seinem Selbstmord „das letzte Opfer der Nazis“.
Alle Kinder, deren Spuren Julian Borger verfolgt, haben Krieg und Holocaust überlebt. Doch der spätere Suizid von Bobby Borger, der nie mit der Familie über das Erlebte sprechen konnte, offenbart noch einmal die Wunden, die diese Erfahrungen geschlagen hatten. Die generationenübergreifenden Traumata der Überlebenden und Familien zeigt der Autor ebenfalls auf.
Fazit
Bereits das Cover ermöglicht den persönlichen Bezug zu den Menschen des Buches, denn es zeigt „Bobby“ Borger mit seinen Eltern und die rettende Anzeige.
Julian Borger schildert spannend und sehr informativ die Motive und die Vorgehensweise seiner Recherche. Nicht immer geht er dabei chronologisch vor, sondern zieht Verbindungen und Vergleiche.
Jedes Kapitel ist einer bestimmten Familie oder Kindern gewidmet. Bilder führen in den Text ein. Julian Borger versteht es, den Menschen über die er schreibt, eine Geschichte und ein Gesicht zu geben. Somit schenkt uns der Autor das Gefühl, dass wir die Menschen kennen.
Immer wieder verwebt er Zahlen und Fakten des Holocaust, schockierende und bewegende Elemente miteinander. Seine Art zu erzählen und zu erklären lassen die Zeit, die beteiligten Menschen und das Geschehen lebendig werden. Man spürt die Angst in der Verzweiflung und Düsternis aber auch den unendlichen Mut und die Liebe.
In unseren Zeiten, in denen in Zügen aus der Ukraine flüchtende Familien mit Kindern sitzen, Zeiten, in denen solche Geschehnisse verdrängt, abgeleugnet und verharmlost werden, Zeiten, in denen wieder die gleichen Sprüche gegrölt und Gesten offen gezeigt werden , Zeiten, in denen Menschen bedenkenlos rechtsextreme und stalinistische Parteien wählen, sind solche Bücher dringend nötig.
Ich kann dieses spannende, bewegende, rührende, aufrüttelnde Buch nur jedem empfehlen. Es hat eine leider nur zu große Aktualität.
February 27, 2024
This book is one of the most moving that I have ever read. Of course, anything to do with the holocaust strikes deeply, but one thing I had never considered is that children would have been sent to safety by parents who were not able to escape themselves.
The book traces the paths of a group of children for whom ads were placed in the Manchester Guardian, requesting good homes by their Viennese parents.
I really knew very little about the complicity of the Austrian nation in the removal of Jewish people from the country and the diverse places that they relocated to. Who knew that there was an enclave of Jews in 1930s Shanghai?
So much pain is uncovered but the author has managed to keep the text from being too maudlin.
So many of these children became successful and highly educated and their ability to deal with their memories and loss is varied. Very sadly, the author’s father committed suicide after burying his experiences so deeply that his children didn’t even know that their family had been impacted by the holocaust.
I’ve learned a great deal about the history of the period, which was never taught in my English-centric history lessons.
I find myself wanting to know more now…….
The book traces the paths of a group of children for whom ads were placed in the Manchester Guardian, requesting good homes by their Viennese parents.
I really knew very little about the complicity of the Austrian nation in the removal of Jewish people from the country and the diverse places that they relocated to. Who knew that there was an enclave of Jews in 1930s Shanghai?
So much pain is uncovered but the author has managed to keep the text from being too maudlin.
So many of these children became successful and highly educated and their ability to deal with their memories and loss is varied. Very sadly, the author’s father committed suicide after burying his experiences so deeply that his children didn’t even know that their family had been impacted by the holocaust.
I’ve learned a great deal about the history of the period, which was never taught in my English-centric history lessons.
I find myself wanting to know more now…….
February 20, 2024
An important book especially in the light of the present day genocide in Palestine. Julian Borger traces his father's story after discovering an ad in The Manchester Guardian in 1938, seeking a kind person to take in the young Jewish boy. Borger's research takes him on an extraordinary journey following the life of his father and others like him.
'The Nazis had been running Vienna for 5 months by the time the advert appeared...No-one could know what was coming because it was beyond imagination'.
How telling in 2024.
'The Nazis had been running Vienna for 5 months by the time the advert appeared...No-one could know what was coming because it was beyond imagination'.
How telling in 2024.
December 22, 2024
In diesem Buch erfahren wir mehr über eine etwas andere Art der Kinderverschickung in den 1930iger Jahren. Vielen von euch, die sich mit der Zeit des Zweiten Weltkrieges beschäftigen und auch darüber lesen, wissen Bescheid über die ersten Kinderverschickungen nach Großbritannien.
Doch schon zuvor waren einige jüdische Eltern klug und haben, wie die Großeltern von Journalist Julian Borger, im "Manchester Guardian" Kleinanzeigen geschaltet. Sie suchten nach Menschen, die ihre Kinder aufnehmen, um sie vor der Machtübernahme der Nationalsozialisten in Sicherheit zu bringen. Obwohl sie ahnten, dass sie ihre Kinder eventuell nie mehr wiedersehen würden...
Ein kleiner Teil dieser Kleinanzeigen wurde auch für den Titel des Buches ausgewählt ("Seek a kind person, who will educate my intelligent Boy, aged 11, Viennese of good family. Borger 5/12 Hintzerstrasse, Vienna 3)
Im Jahre 1938 hat sein Großvater Leo genau diesen Text für seinen Sohn Robert Borger gewählt. Nach dem Tod seines Vaters Robert 1983 hat sich Journalist Julian Borger auf die Spurensuche betreffend seiner Familiengeschichte begeben. Niemand in der Familie wusste über seine Zeit als jüdisches Kind in Wien und sein Leben nach der Ankunft in Großbritannien. Julian Borger recherchierte akribisch. Dabei erfuhr er auch über dieses Inserat seines Großvaters und beginnt nachzuforschen. Im Verlauf seiner Recherche versuchte er mehr über die Schicksale der weiteren sechs Kinder herauszufinden, die am selben Tag in den Kleininseraten im "Manchester Guardian" ausgeschrieben wurden. Dies war alles andere als einfach und hat gedauert. Borger hat nach den Nachkommen der damaligen Kinder gesucht und versucht Kontakt aufzunehmen.
Was alle damaligen Kinder ihr ganzes Leben lang "verfolgte", war die "Schuld des Überlebens". Gleichzeitig fühlten sie sich auch unwürdig gegenüber Überlebenden aus den Konzentrationslagern, weil sie relativ sicher den Holocaust überlebt haben. Diese Traumata führten auch zum Selbstmord von Borgers Vater.
Was mir doch einige Schwierigkeiten bereitet hat, waren Julian Borgers oftmalige Wechsel von Personen und Zeit. Oft schwenkt der Autor mitten in seiner Erzählung von einer Person zu einer anderen und streut Fakten aus deren Leben ein. Das verwirrt zusätzlich, nachdem die Erzählungen auch zeitlich nicht chronologisch sind. Man benötigt deshalb hohe Konzentration und trotzdem sind mir oftmals die Schicksale mancher Menschen durcheinander gekommen. Trotz der wirklich akribischen Recherche und den berührenden Schicksalen, konnte ich deswegen manches Mal keine wirkliche Beziehung zu einigen der Figuren herstellen. Diese abrupten Wechsel und sich ins uferlose Verlieren, nimmt der biografischen Erzählung etwas an Tiefe. Das hätte vermieden werden können. Trotzdem sind die Erzählungen berührend. Man möchte sich gar nicht vorstellen, dass man seine eigenen Kinder alleine auf den Weg in ein fremdes Land schickt, deren Sprache sie nicht sprechen und sich einer ungewissen Zukunft entgegen sehen. Ich möchte nicht in dieser Haut der Eltern stecken, die sich entscheiden müssen....einfach grausam und auch heute noch genauso ein Thema!
Zwischen den einzelnen Kapiteln "lockern" schwarz-weiß Bilder der beschrieben Personen, die doch oftmals sehr emotionalen Schilderungen, auf.
Obwohl es sich bei seiner Erzählung nicht um eines der sechs Kinder handelt, die damals in den Kleinanzeigen vorkamen, hat mich die Geschichte um Borgers Großtante Marci und deren Schicksal fast am meisten berührt.
Fazit:
Dieses Buch ist sowohl eine Familienbiografie, als auch eine Art Enthüllungsstory. Auf jeden Fall aber ein wichtiger Beitrag zum Thema #gegendasvergessen - besonders in der heutigen Zeit, in der die Zeitzeugen von damals verstorben sind und der Rassismus eine neue Hochsaison erlebt.
Doch schon zuvor waren einige jüdische Eltern klug und haben, wie die Großeltern von Journalist Julian Borger, im "Manchester Guardian" Kleinanzeigen geschaltet. Sie suchten nach Menschen, die ihre Kinder aufnehmen, um sie vor der Machtübernahme der Nationalsozialisten in Sicherheit zu bringen. Obwohl sie ahnten, dass sie ihre Kinder eventuell nie mehr wiedersehen würden...
Ein kleiner Teil dieser Kleinanzeigen wurde auch für den Titel des Buches ausgewählt ("Seek a kind person, who will educate my intelligent Boy, aged 11, Viennese of good family. Borger 5/12 Hintzerstrasse, Vienna 3)
Im Jahre 1938 hat sein Großvater Leo genau diesen Text für seinen Sohn Robert Borger gewählt. Nach dem Tod seines Vaters Robert 1983 hat sich Journalist Julian Borger auf die Spurensuche betreffend seiner Familiengeschichte begeben. Niemand in der Familie wusste über seine Zeit als jüdisches Kind in Wien und sein Leben nach der Ankunft in Großbritannien. Julian Borger recherchierte akribisch. Dabei erfuhr er auch über dieses Inserat seines Großvaters und beginnt nachzuforschen. Im Verlauf seiner Recherche versuchte er mehr über die Schicksale der weiteren sechs Kinder herauszufinden, die am selben Tag in den Kleininseraten im "Manchester Guardian" ausgeschrieben wurden. Dies war alles andere als einfach und hat gedauert. Borger hat nach den Nachkommen der damaligen Kinder gesucht und versucht Kontakt aufzunehmen.
Was alle damaligen Kinder ihr ganzes Leben lang "verfolgte", war die "Schuld des Überlebens". Gleichzeitig fühlten sie sich auch unwürdig gegenüber Überlebenden aus den Konzentrationslagern, weil sie relativ sicher den Holocaust überlebt haben. Diese Traumata führten auch zum Selbstmord von Borgers Vater.
Was mir doch einige Schwierigkeiten bereitet hat, waren Julian Borgers oftmalige Wechsel von Personen und Zeit. Oft schwenkt der Autor mitten in seiner Erzählung von einer Person zu einer anderen und streut Fakten aus deren Leben ein. Das verwirrt zusätzlich, nachdem die Erzählungen auch zeitlich nicht chronologisch sind. Man benötigt deshalb hohe Konzentration und trotzdem sind mir oftmals die Schicksale mancher Menschen durcheinander gekommen. Trotz der wirklich akribischen Recherche und den berührenden Schicksalen, konnte ich deswegen manches Mal keine wirkliche Beziehung zu einigen der Figuren herstellen. Diese abrupten Wechsel und sich ins uferlose Verlieren, nimmt der biografischen Erzählung etwas an Tiefe. Das hätte vermieden werden können. Trotzdem sind die Erzählungen berührend. Man möchte sich gar nicht vorstellen, dass man seine eigenen Kinder alleine auf den Weg in ein fremdes Land schickt, deren Sprache sie nicht sprechen und sich einer ungewissen Zukunft entgegen sehen. Ich möchte nicht in dieser Haut der Eltern stecken, die sich entscheiden müssen....einfach grausam und auch heute noch genauso ein Thema!
Zwischen den einzelnen Kapiteln "lockern" schwarz-weiß Bilder der beschrieben Personen, die doch oftmals sehr emotionalen Schilderungen, auf.
Obwohl es sich bei seiner Erzählung nicht um eines der sechs Kinder handelt, die damals in den Kleinanzeigen vorkamen, hat mich die Geschichte um Borgers Großtante Marci und deren Schicksal fast am meisten berührt.
Fazit:
Dieses Buch ist sowohl eine Familienbiografie, als auch eine Art Enthüllungsstory. Auf jeden Fall aber ein wichtiger Beitrag zum Thema #gegendasvergessen - besonders in der heutigen Zeit, in der die Zeitzeugen von damals verstorben sind und der Rassismus eine neue Hochsaison erlebt.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 175 reviews