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Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance
5 hours, 37 minutes
In the tradition of When Time Stopped and The Hare with Amber Eyes, this extraordinary family memoir investigates the dark legacy of the author’s great-grandfather, a talented German-Jewish chemist specializing in radioactive household products who wound up developing chemical weapons and gas mask filters for the Nazis.
When novelist and poet Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their heroic escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. Instead, what he found in his great-grandfather’s voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. “I confess to my descendants who will read these lines that I made a grave error. I betrayed myself, my most sacred principles,” he wrote. “I cannot shake off the great debt on my conscience.”
Siegfried Merzbacher was a German-Jewish chemist living in Oranienburg, a small town north of Berlin, where he developed various household items, including a radioactive toothpaste called Doramad. But then he was asked by the government to work on products with a strong military connection—first he made and tested gas-mask filters, and then he was invited to establish a chemical weapons laboratory. Between 1933 and 1935, he was a Jewish chemist making chemical weapons for the Nazis. While he and his nuclear family escaped safely to Turkey before the war, Siegfried never got over his complicity, particularly after learning that members of his extended family were murdered in Auschwitz.
Armed only with his great-grandfather’s rambling, 2,000-page deathbed memoir and a handful of archival clues, Dunthorne traveled to Munich, Ammendorf, Berlin, Ankara, and Oranienburg—a place where hundreds of unexploded bombs remain hidden in the irradiated soil—to reckon with the remarkable, unsettling legacy of his family’s past.
In the tradition of When Time Stopped and The Hare with Amber Eyes, this extraordinary family memoir investigates the dark legacy of the author’s great-grandfather, a talented German-Jewish chemist specializing in radioactive household products who wound up developing chemical weapons and gas mask filters for the Nazis.
When novelist and poet Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their heroic escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. Instead, what he found in his great-grandfather’s voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. “I confess to my descendants who will read these lines that I made a grave error. I betrayed myself, my most sacred principles,” he wrote. “I cannot shake off the great debt on my conscience.”
Siegfried Merzbacher was a German-Jewish chemist living in Oranienburg, a small town north of Berlin, where he developed various household items, including a radioactive toothpaste called Doramad. But then he was asked by the government to work on products with a strong military connection—first he made and tested gas-mask filters, and then he was invited to establish a chemical weapons laboratory. Between 1933 and 1935, he was a Jewish chemist making chemical weapons for the Nazis. While he and his nuclear family escaped safely to Turkey before the war, Siegfried never got over his complicity, particularly after learning that members of his extended family were murdered in Auschwitz.
Armed only with his great-grandfather’s rambling, 2,000-page deathbed memoir and a handful of archival clues, Dunthorne traveled to Munich, Ammendorf, Berlin, Ankara, and Oranienburg—a place where hundreds of unexploded bombs remain hidden in the irradiated soil—to reckon with the remarkable, unsettling legacy of his family’s past.
Audiobook
First published April 1, 2025
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About the author
Joe Dunthorne
11 books300 followersJoe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea, and is a graduate of the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing MA, where he was awarded the Curtis Brown prize.
His poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies and has featured on Channel 4, and BBC Radio 3 and 4. A pamphlet collection, Joe Dunthorne: Faber New Poets 5 was published in 2010.
His first novel, Submarine, the story of a dysfunctional family in Swansea narrated by Oliver Tate, aged 15, was published in 2008.
His poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies and has featured on Channel 4, and BBC Radio 3 and 4. A pamphlet collection, Joe Dunthorne: Faber New Poets 5 was published in 2010.
His first novel, Submarine, the story of a dysfunctional family in Swansea narrated by Oliver Tate, aged 15, was published in 2008.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 156 reviews
March 21, 2025
Is an inventor responsible for his or her inventions?
Growing up, Joe Dunthorne believed that his family orchestrated a brave, cunning escape from the Nazis in 1935. However, the truth is much darker.
As a Jewish chemist, Siegfried Merzbacher (Joe’s great-grandfather) was tapped to lead a chemical weapons program in Germany.
This book delves into the morality of Siegfried’s choices. If he refused, someone else would lead the programs. While he proceeded in good faith, often experimenting on himself and his family, should he be responsible for what we know now? What about the danger of his family in the event of a catastrophe? And should he refuse, would he be put in the concentration camp located just around the corner from his apartment?
The first half of this book is unique and provides a lot of food for thought. However, the last portion of the book delves into Siegfried’s sister and veers away from the main story.
Further, the ending isn’t very strong, but Children of Radium would make an excellent book club pick if one wants to discuss the ethics of invention.
*Thanks, Scribner, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and unbiased opinion.
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Hardcover Text – Free/Nada/Zilch through publisher
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Growing up, Joe Dunthorne believed that his family orchestrated a brave, cunning escape from the Nazis in 1935. However, the truth is much darker.
As a Jewish chemist, Siegfried Merzbacher (Joe’s great-grandfather) was tapped to lead a chemical weapons program in Germany.
This book delves into the morality of Siegfried’s choices. If he refused, someone else would lead the programs. While he proceeded in good faith, often experimenting on himself and his family, should he be responsible for what we know now? What about the danger of his family in the event of a catastrophe? And should he refuse, would he be put in the concentration camp located just around the corner from his apartment?
The first half of this book is unique and provides a lot of food for thought. However, the last portion of the book delves into Siegfried’s sister and veers away from the main story.
Further, the ending isn’t very strong, but Children of Radium would make an excellent book club pick if one wants to discuss the ethics of invention.
*Thanks, Scribner, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and unbiased opinion.
The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – Free/Nada/Zilch through publisher
Connect With Me!
Blog Twitter BookTube Facebook Insta My Bookstore at Pango
April 16, 2025
I'm gonna need a minute, Children or Radium was haunting in a way that very few books are.
It was an extremely gripping read, I had a hard time pausing the audiobook because I wanted to know more. I learned quite a few things that I didn't know previously. Likewise, some events were put into perspective, now that I have more information about them.
As I was listening, I kept being shocked by the things I was learning, like the radioactive toothpaste (I had no idea!), which made me dig into it deeper. I still can't believe it was actually a thing, and that people were considering it to be some kind of cure. Different times, that's for sure.
Mr Dunthorne's writing style shines through, even in the audio version, as does his humour. I found myself laughing out loud multiple times.
The research that went into this is very much appreciated, though I feel like there's even more to say, the book was far too short for such an interesting subject matter.
I'll have to get a physical copy, this is a book worth having.
It was an extremely gripping read, I had a hard time pausing the audiobook because I wanted to know more. I learned quite a few things that I didn't know previously. Likewise, some events were put into perspective, now that I have more information about them.
As I was listening, I kept being shocked by the things I was learning, like the radioactive toothpaste (I had no idea!), which made me dig into it deeper. I still can't believe it was actually a thing, and that people were considering it to be some kind of cure. Different times, that's for sure.
Mr Dunthorne's writing style shines through, even in the audio version, as does his humour. I found myself laughing out loud multiple times.
The research that went into this is very much appreciated, though I feel like there's even more to say, the book was far too short for such an interesting subject matter.
I'll have to get a physical copy, this is a book worth having.
February 11, 2025
It's sometimes hard to understand the motivation for the fact that people perform nefarious things without thinking of the consequences. However, for Siegfried Merzbacher, German-Jewish chemist, this was both his life's work and a way to keep himself and his family alive in the pre Nazi era. His work in producing radium toothpaste (Doramand), proceeded to making gas masks, and then to making chemical weapons for the Nazis. For two years he did this, before escaping to Turkey with his family before the war actually started. Later, when he learned his work aided in killing Jews including his family members, he had to live with that fact for the rest of his days.
Joe Dunthorne, the author, is the great grandson of Siegfried Merzbacher, and he was intent on finding and tracking down his great grandfather's story. Traveling to towns in Germany, where the soil is still irradiated, Joe tries to understand and reconcile his great grandfather's past. Using Siegfried's rambling two thousand page memoir as his guide, he attempts to absorb and deal with his family's past.
Joe Dunthorne, the author, is the great grandson of Siegfried Merzbacher, and he was intent on finding and tracking down his great grandfather's story. Traveling to towns in Germany, where the soil is still irradiated, Joe tries to understand and reconcile his great grandfather's past. Using Siegfried's rambling two thousand page memoir as his guide, he attempts to absorb and deal with his family's past.
April 21, 2025
I so wanted to like this more than I actually did. It starts so strong with a story about the author's relative who created irridated toothpaste and how he and many, many children and adults used that toothpaste regularly until they all...glowed. EEK!!! Unfortunately, the story soon devolves into a confusing mess of trying to find out if the stories of his family the author has always heard were true, were they lies, or were they actually WORSE than what he has always been told; it becomes a jumbled mess that promises much more than it actually delivers, and the by the deeply unsatisfying end, I was ready for this short [which is some of the problem here I think; had it been longer, there would have been room to make it less jumbled, to flesh more of the story out, which really was needed] book to be over. I spent most of it confused and ultimately, I was just disappointed overall.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and Scribner for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and Scribner for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
April 28, 2025
Joe Dunthorne's Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance is a remarkable work of literary investigation that begins with a simple desire to explore family history and morphs into something far more complex and unsettling. What starts as the author's attempt to write about his grandmother's heroic escape from Nazi Germany transforms into a reckoning with a darker legacy: his great-grandfather, Siegfried Merzbacher, was a Jewish chemist who developed chemical weapons for the Nazis.
The book joins a growing canon of what might be called "inherited guilt literature"—memoirs like Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes or Hadley Freeman's House of Glass—but with a twist that sets it apart. Instead of uncovering the suffering of Jewish ancestors during the Holocaust, Dunthorne discovers complicity.
The Maddening Contradictions of Real People
Dunthorne writes with a measured elegance that never overreaches, balancing dry wit with deep empathy—even when the revelations are deeply disturbing. His prose captures the disorientation of discovering that your family history is not what you imagined:
"What was harder to comprehend was how I had managed to forget most of what she actually told me, and work my way back to the story I preferred to believe in."
The author begins with a simple object: a ring his mother gave him for his wedding, which supposedly "escaped the Nazis" in 1935. This is the launching point for an investigation that spans continents, archives, and generations, leading him to uncover the truth about his great-grandfather Siegfried, who developed radioactive toothpaste called Doramad before moving on to gas mask filters and, eventually, chemical weapons research for the Third Reich.
What makes this book exceptional is Dunthorne's commitment to complexity. He refuses to flatten his ancestors into simple heroes or villains. His great-grandfather is both a gifted scientist and a moral coward, a loving father and a man who helps facilitate mass murder. His grandmother is both a survivor and someone so traumatized she becomes cruel in her old age, making carers cry "on their first visit."
The Toxic Landscape of Memory
Dunthorne's research takes him to Oranienburg, a town outside Berlin where unexploded bombs from WWII still lurk beneath the radioactive soil—a perfect metaphor for the buried dangers of his family history. With a Geiger counter in hand, he scours the earth for traces of his great-grandfather's poisons, a quixotic gesture that captures the essence of his project: the desperate search for tangible evidence of intangible guilt.
Some of the most haunting passages come when Dunthorne visits Dersim, Turkey, where chemical weapons possibly developed with his great-grandfather's expertise may have been used in massacres of Kurdish Alevis in 1937-38. A local activist tells him, "If your great-grandfather was involved in this massacre, this genocide—if he had any single role in this genocide—we forgive him." The moment is devastating in its generosity.
The book doesn't just confront one family's secrets; it illuminates broader questions about how ordinary people become entangled with extraordinary evil. Siegfried's justifications—that he was "only" researching chemical weapons, not manufacturing them; that he helped Jewish colleagues escape Germany—are the familiar evasions of those who collaborate with atrocity.
Structural Brilliance and Generational Echoes
The structure of Children of Radium is masterful, moving between Dunthorne's present-day investigations and reconstructions of his ancestors' lives. The book's middle sections, where he explores his great-grandfather's psychiatric records from 1957, reveal a man tormented not by guilt over chemical weapons, but by more mundane anxieties. This disconnect becomes yet another mystery to unravel.
What emerges is a portrait of selective memory across generations. Siegfried wrote a 2,000-page memoir that somehow managed to minimize his work on chemical weapons. Dunthorne's grandmother refused to discuss her past. His mother throws away crucial documents, saying, "So, from your point of view, he doesn't exist." The inheritance is as much about forgetting as remembering.
In a particularly poignant twist, Dunthorne discovers that his great-grandfather's sister, Elisabeth, was a remarkable humanitarian who ran a children's home in Munich that sheltered Jewish orphans until she was forced to flee in 1939. Her colleagues who stayed behind were murdered at Auschwitz—killed using technology Siegfried had helped develop. This revelation shifts the moral center of the family story, suggesting that Dunthorne might have been writing about the wrong ancestor all along.
The Ambiguous Joy of Becoming German Again
The book culminates with a scene of profound ambivalence: Dunthorne and his family receiving German citizenship as descendants of victims of Nazi persecution. This moment captures the book's central tension. How do we reconcile the contradictory truths of our inheritance? Can citizenship papers restore what was taken? Can an investigation heal a wound?
Dunthorne writes of this moment: "It was interesting, simultaneously fraudulent and profound. While no burdens were suddenly lifted, there was a flash of connectedness, a sense of generations spreading out behind and ahead of us, like when you pull apart a paper chain and suddenly see all the human-shaped figures, dangling and holding on to each other."
Limitations and Critique
Despite its many strengths, the book occasionally struggles with pacing. Some sections—particularly those focused on the medical records and the detailed chemical research—might test readers' patience. There are moments when Dunthorne's investigation seems to spiral into minutiae, with diminishing returns in terms of insight or narrative momentum.
Additionally, while Dunthorne is admirably humble about the limits of his knowledge, occasionally this becomes a rhetorical strategy that allows him to avoid more pointed ethical judgments. Some readers might wish for a more forceful moral reckoning with Siegfried's choices, rather than the author's sometimes overly diffident approach.
The book also might have benefited from more exploration of the scientific context around chemical weapons and radioactive products in the early 20th century. While Dunthorne touches on the bizarre popularity of radioactive consumer goods like toothpaste and face creams, this fascinating historical backdrop sometimes recedes behind the family drama.
Final Assessment: A Triumph of Literary Nonfiction
These minor criticisms aside, Children of Radium stands as an exceptional achievement in literary nonfiction. It joins books like Philippe Sands' East West Street in its ability to weave personal history with the broader currents of 20th-century catastrophe. Dunthorne, previously known for his novels (Submarine, Wild Abandon, The Adulterants) and poetry (O Positive), proves equally adept at navigating the ethical complexities of nonfiction.
What distinguishes this book is its refusal of easy resolution. There is no catharsis, no tidy moral, no redemptive arc. Instead, we're left with the messy reality of how historical trauma persists across generations and how even the most intimate knowledge of our ancestors leaves crucial questions unanswered.
"...hoping to replace my comforting fantasy with something meaningful and true," Dunthorne writes. This statement serves as both the project's aspiration and its limitation. The truth, as this remarkable book demonstrates, is rarely comforting, often incomplete, and never as straightforward as we might wish.
Children of Radium ultimately becomes a meditation on the impossibility of fully knowing the past while acknowledging our inescapable connection to it. Like the radioactive elements in his great-grandfather's toothpaste, this history continues to emit its particles long after the original source is gone. All we can do is detect its presence and try to understand its effects.
The book joins a growing canon of what might be called "inherited guilt literature"—memoirs like Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes or Hadley Freeman's House of Glass—but with a twist that sets it apart. Instead of uncovering the suffering of Jewish ancestors during the Holocaust, Dunthorne discovers complicity.
The Maddening Contradictions of Real People
Dunthorne writes with a measured elegance that never overreaches, balancing dry wit with deep empathy—even when the revelations are deeply disturbing. His prose captures the disorientation of discovering that your family history is not what you imagined:
"What was harder to comprehend was how I had managed to forget most of what she actually told me, and work my way back to the story I preferred to believe in."
The author begins with a simple object: a ring his mother gave him for his wedding, which supposedly "escaped the Nazis" in 1935. This is the launching point for an investigation that spans continents, archives, and generations, leading him to uncover the truth about his great-grandfather Siegfried, who developed radioactive toothpaste called Doramad before moving on to gas mask filters and, eventually, chemical weapons research for the Third Reich.
What makes this book exceptional is Dunthorne's commitment to complexity. He refuses to flatten his ancestors into simple heroes or villains. His great-grandfather is both a gifted scientist and a moral coward, a loving father and a man who helps facilitate mass murder. His grandmother is both a survivor and someone so traumatized she becomes cruel in her old age, making carers cry "on their first visit."
The Toxic Landscape of Memory
Dunthorne's research takes him to Oranienburg, a town outside Berlin where unexploded bombs from WWII still lurk beneath the radioactive soil—a perfect metaphor for the buried dangers of his family history. With a Geiger counter in hand, he scours the earth for traces of his great-grandfather's poisons, a quixotic gesture that captures the essence of his project: the desperate search for tangible evidence of intangible guilt.
Some of the most haunting passages come when Dunthorne visits Dersim, Turkey, where chemical weapons possibly developed with his great-grandfather's expertise may have been used in massacres of Kurdish Alevis in 1937-38. A local activist tells him, "If your great-grandfather was involved in this massacre, this genocide—if he had any single role in this genocide—we forgive him." The moment is devastating in its generosity.
The book doesn't just confront one family's secrets; it illuminates broader questions about how ordinary people become entangled with extraordinary evil. Siegfried's justifications—that he was "only" researching chemical weapons, not manufacturing them; that he helped Jewish colleagues escape Germany—are the familiar evasions of those who collaborate with atrocity.
Structural Brilliance and Generational Echoes
The structure of Children of Radium is masterful, moving between Dunthorne's present-day investigations and reconstructions of his ancestors' lives. The book's middle sections, where he explores his great-grandfather's psychiatric records from 1957, reveal a man tormented not by guilt over chemical weapons, but by more mundane anxieties. This disconnect becomes yet another mystery to unravel.
What emerges is a portrait of selective memory across generations. Siegfried wrote a 2,000-page memoir that somehow managed to minimize his work on chemical weapons. Dunthorne's grandmother refused to discuss her past. His mother throws away crucial documents, saying, "So, from your point of view, he doesn't exist." The inheritance is as much about forgetting as remembering.
In a particularly poignant twist, Dunthorne discovers that his great-grandfather's sister, Elisabeth, was a remarkable humanitarian who ran a children's home in Munich that sheltered Jewish orphans until she was forced to flee in 1939. Her colleagues who stayed behind were murdered at Auschwitz—killed using technology Siegfried had helped develop. This revelation shifts the moral center of the family story, suggesting that Dunthorne might have been writing about the wrong ancestor all along.
The Ambiguous Joy of Becoming German Again
The book culminates with a scene of profound ambivalence: Dunthorne and his family receiving German citizenship as descendants of victims of Nazi persecution. This moment captures the book's central tension. How do we reconcile the contradictory truths of our inheritance? Can citizenship papers restore what was taken? Can an investigation heal a wound?
Dunthorne writes of this moment: "It was interesting, simultaneously fraudulent and profound. While no burdens were suddenly lifted, there was a flash of connectedness, a sense of generations spreading out behind and ahead of us, like when you pull apart a paper chain and suddenly see all the human-shaped figures, dangling and holding on to each other."
Limitations and Critique
Despite its many strengths, the book occasionally struggles with pacing. Some sections—particularly those focused on the medical records and the detailed chemical research—might test readers' patience. There are moments when Dunthorne's investigation seems to spiral into minutiae, with diminishing returns in terms of insight or narrative momentum.
Additionally, while Dunthorne is admirably humble about the limits of his knowledge, occasionally this becomes a rhetorical strategy that allows him to avoid more pointed ethical judgments. Some readers might wish for a more forceful moral reckoning with Siegfried's choices, rather than the author's sometimes overly diffident approach.
The book also might have benefited from more exploration of the scientific context around chemical weapons and radioactive products in the early 20th century. While Dunthorne touches on the bizarre popularity of radioactive consumer goods like toothpaste and face creams, this fascinating historical backdrop sometimes recedes behind the family drama.
Final Assessment: A Triumph of Literary Nonfiction
These minor criticisms aside, Children of Radium stands as an exceptional achievement in literary nonfiction. It joins books like Philippe Sands' East West Street in its ability to weave personal history with the broader currents of 20th-century catastrophe. Dunthorne, previously known for his novels (Submarine, Wild Abandon, The Adulterants) and poetry (O Positive), proves equally adept at navigating the ethical complexities of nonfiction.
What distinguishes this book is its refusal of easy resolution. There is no catharsis, no tidy moral, no redemptive arc. Instead, we're left with the messy reality of how historical trauma persists across generations and how even the most intimate knowledge of our ancestors leaves crucial questions unanswered.
"...hoping to replace my comforting fantasy with something meaningful and true," Dunthorne writes. This statement serves as both the project's aspiration and its limitation. The truth, as this remarkable book demonstrates, is rarely comforting, often incomplete, and never as straightforward as we might wish.
Children of Radium ultimately becomes a meditation on the impossibility of fully knowing the past while acknowledging our inescapable connection to it. Like the radioactive elements in his great-grandfather's toothpaste, this history continues to emit its particles long after the original source is gone. All we can do is detect its presence and try to understand its effects.
June 10, 2025
A very interesting story of a Jewish scientist who escaped Nazi Germany to Turkey in 1935. While researching the family history of this event, Dunthorne found that his great grandfather made and tested gas mask filters and also helped the Nazis refine their poisons. After moving to Turkey, he continued to work for the Nazis. This is a compelling story of the long lasting trauma that is still playing out from the Nazi regime.
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October 11, 2025Unfocused
May 2, 2025
Such an incredible story, one you will not forget in a hurry ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
July 23, 2025
The book is based on a compelling story, but it felt unfocused throughout. Even the title seems like a misnomer. Certainly Siegfried's work and relationships were morally complex and often appalling, but it's hard to understand if he was able to acknowledge reality enough to recognize his complicity. The author covers several devastating, evil genocides and ties them together through his grandfather's work, but the man's actual life was mostly a collection of facts. I think my dad could probably easily write a memoir like Siegfried's, millions of words with tons of very specific technical detail and little emotional substance.
August 7, 2025
This didn't turn out to be the book I was expecting after reading the summary. The first 36 pages were fascinating (and horrifying), but it quickly went downhill from there. It felt like Dunthorne had a vision for the book and started writing it before he finished doing all the necessary research, so it wasn't until he was halfway through writing the book that he realised that the story he thought he was going to tell about his great grandfather wasn't actually the truth, so he quickly had to pivot and added in short biographies of a number of his family members who were related (some closely, some not so much) to Siegfried (his great grandfather) to flesh out the book.
April 18, 2025
Joe Dunthorne is an English novelist. Children of Radium is a nonfiction family memoir tracing the story of Dunthorne's great-grandfather Siegfried Merzbacher, a German-Jewish chemist whose work helped develop Nazi hazardous agents used during World War II. Though Merzbacher and his immediate family fled to Turkey and survived the war, many extended family and friend were not as fortunate. Merzbacher left behind voluminous but apparently not very well-written unpublished memoirs when he passed away, and Children of Radium seems to be Dunthorne's quest to honor his great-grandfather's legacy as he contended with his complicated feelings after the death of his grandmother (Merzbacher's daughter) and his family becoming naturalized as dual German-British citizens (basically to regain EU privileges after Brexit).
This is a brief memoir but still came across as unfocused to me -- probably owing to the fact that there's still a lot of unknowns about his great-grandfather's life -- a reminder that even as copiously as one writes, there can still be so much left unsaid.
My statistics:
Book 120 for 2025
Book 2046 cumulatively
This is a brief memoir but still came across as unfocused to me -- probably owing to the fact that there's still a lot of unknowns about his great-grandfather's life -- a reminder that even as copiously as one writes, there can still be so much left unsaid.
My statistics:
Book 120 for 2025
Book 2046 cumulatively
May 15, 2025
After his gradmother’s death, Joe Dunthorne started poking around in the drawer containing the family archive of papers, hoping to learn more about his family’s harrowing escape from Nazi Germany as Jews during the 1936 Munich Olympics. Surprisingly, while researching his grandmother, he learns that the story he’d been told was far from reality, and that he had already been told the real story by his grandmother. For some reason, his brain didn’t hold onto the true story but went back to the legend. In an effort to reconcile the two stories, Dunthorne begins reading his grandmother’s extraordinarily long memoirs (over 2000 pages in the original German). It is then that he realizes his family holds a dark legacy, that of his grandfather working in research and development of chemical weapons that were used against the Jews in the concentration camps. How can a man who identified as Jewish continue working for their destruction? This is the question Dunthorne sought to answer.
Children of Radium is a family memoir, full of stories and anecdotes of both Dunthorne’s prickly grandmother and the work of his great-grandfather Siegfried Merzbacher. Dunthorne goes to Germany to see where his ancestors lived, and after learning how they escaped Nazi Germany and emigrated to Turkey, he goes there as well and realizes that his grandfather continued his chemical weapons work; this time it was used against an ethnic minority that the Turks wanted to eliminate. Dunthorne believes that Siegfried’s copious memoirs are a reckoning of sorts, he himself trying to justify or come to terms with the awful things resulting from his work.
The first half of the book really captured me, and I was fascinated to go along with Dunthorne on all his research trips to Germany and Turkey. However, the ending seemed a bit weak, culminating with Dunthorne and his family reclaiming their German citizenship that had been revoked during the Holocaust.
As someone who reads voraciously about the Holocaust, this is most certainly an interesting addition to the genre. Was Siegfried justified in his work, as he believed, in order to keep someone less scrupulous from coming up with products even more deadly? It’s an interesting question.
Children of Radium is a family memoir, full of stories and anecdotes of both Dunthorne’s prickly grandmother and the work of his great-grandfather Siegfried Merzbacher. Dunthorne goes to Germany to see where his ancestors lived, and after learning how they escaped Nazi Germany and emigrated to Turkey, he goes there as well and realizes that his grandfather continued his chemical weapons work; this time it was used against an ethnic minority that the Turks wanted to eliminate. Dunthorne believes that Siegfried’s copious memoirs are a reckoning of sorts, he himself trying to justify or come to terms with the awful things resulting from his work.
The first half of the book really captured me, and I was fascinated to go along with Dunthorne on all his research trips to Germany and Turkey. However, the ending seemed a bit weak, culminating with Dunthorne and his family reclaiming their German citizenship that had been revoked during the Holocaust.
As someone who reads voraciously about the Holocaust, this is most certainly an interesting addition to the genre. Was Siegfried justified in his work, as he believed, in order to keep someone less scrupulous from coming up with products even more deadly? It’s an interesting question.
October 16, 2025
Not quite what I expected, but I did find it interesting & a quick read. The past & our family histories are not always what they seem.
September 7, 2025
Meh…
I thought this book would be right up my alley, the author is trying to learn more about his eccentric great grandfather, a Jewish scientist working on radioactive toothpaste and was recruited to help work on a chemical weapons laboratory before the start of WWII. Dunthorne sets out to find about more about his family history and to grapple with family trauma, guilt, identity.
The idea is interesting and beginning was promising but then the book meanders without a true destination in mind. I feel like Dunthorne struggles to cohesively connect his ideas. There is also an underlying self deprecating whinyness that put a sour taste in my mouth. (admittedly I am a mother to a 5 year old so my tolerance for whining is pretty low these days 🤣)
I did enjoy parts of the book but wish it had been better thought out.
I thought this book would be right up my alley, the author is trying to learn more about his eccentric great grandfather, a Jewish scientist working on radioactive toothpaste and was recruited to help work on a chemical weapons laboratory before the start of WWII. Dunthorne sets out to find about more about his family history and to grapple with family trauma, guilt, identity.
The idea is interesting and beginning was promising but then the book meanders without a true destination in mind. I feel like Dunthorne struggles to cohesively connect his ideas. There is also an underlying self deprecating whinyness that put a sour taste in my mouth. (admittedly I am a mother to a 5 year old so my tolerance for whining is pretty low these days 🤣)
I did enjoy parts of the book but wish it had been better thought out.
October 25, 2025
While this was interesting, I was disappointed in the general story. I was expecting to learn about the great grandfather's life and path to making chemical weapons for the Nazis. The long running scenes of the author traveling to Turkey, and other places, I didn't see the point in how that told the story of his great grandfather. I feel the book blurb is misleading because I didn't get Siegfried Merzbacher story. I got a generational tale of the author's family. Interesting, at times, but I was expecting something else. I mean, LOOK at this quote: “I confess to my descendants who will read these lines that I made a grave error. I betrayed myself, my most sacred principles,” he wrote. “I cannot shake off the great debt on my conscience.” Where was that story?!?!?! As odd as it sounds, the line "the great debt on my conscience" is beautiful, and so meaningful. It tells a story already with so few words. I wanted to learn about that debt, and how it came to be owed.
I didn't feel I got that story here. 3 stars. The narration was excellent though, so 5 stars for the audio.
I didn't feel I got that story here. 3 stars. The narration was excellent though, so 5 stars for the audio.
December 7, 2024
Children of Radium is a candid and thought-provoking family history set against the Nazi regime.
Although the book deals with a whole raft of serious themes - scientific ethics, chemical warfare and the Holocaust - and grapples with the central question of morality, Dunthorne unpicks the story of his great-grandfather's life with a wry sense of humour, rendering even the darkest subject matter into a personable and compelling read. This is a book about ambiguity, how one can be both victim and villain, and in many ways Dunthorne's tone underlines rather than undermines the complexity of this focus.
Dunthorne's research takes him on a journey which reveals how the past still bleeds into the present, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
*Thank you to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review*
Although the book deals with a whole raft of serious themes - scientific ethics, chemical warfare and the Holocaust - and grapples with the central question of morality, Dunthorne unpicks the story of his great-grandfather's life with a wry sense of humour, rendering even the darkest subject matter into a personable and compelling read. This is a book about ambiguity, how one can be both victim and villain, and in many ways Dunthorne's tone underlines rather than undermines the complexity of this focus.
Dunthorne's research takes him on a journey which reveals how the past still bleeds into the present, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
*Thank you to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review*
June 30, 2025
"Not once in the many hours he had spent talking about his life had he mentioned chemical weapons."
"Given that his medical notes reveal his most persistent emotions as envy and self-pity, I wondered if his entire memoir was an attempt, whether conscious or not, to build a legacy for himself, ending with the grand performance of his own guilt, the weight of history on his shoulders. Because wasn't there something flattering about the idea of battling for decades with a complex moral burden? Wasn't that preferable to admitting to the pedestrian resentments which, it seemed from his medical records, were the true source of his unhappiness?"
This was really excellent. I loved the part where he boiled a calf's tongue in the name of research. Fascinating section set in Turkey. I think the most impressive thing about this is how CONDENSED it is in terms of YEARS OF RESEARCH and a COMPLICATED STORY with a TON OF DOCUMENTS/RESOURCES. Very, very impressive. I also really liked the mother and grandmother's place in the story. This book truly is a lesson in how less is more - in cutting, reducing, and simplifying.
"Given that his medical notes reveal his most persistent emotions as envy and self-pity, I wondered if his entire memoir was an attempt, whether conscious or not, to build a legacy for himself, ending with the grand performance of his own guilt, the weight of history on his shoulders. Because wasn't there something flattering about the idea of battling for decades with a complex moral burden? Wasn't that preferable to admitting to the pedestrian resentments which, it seemed from his medical records, were the true source of his unhappiness?"
This was really excellent. I loved the part where he boiled a calf's tongue in the name of research. Fascinating section set in Turkey. I think the most impressive thing about this is how CONDENSED it is in terms of YEARS OF RESEARCH and a COMPLICATED STORY with a TON OF DOCUMENTS/RESOURCES. Very, very impressive. I also really liked the mother and grandmother's place in the story. This book truly is a lesson in how less is more - in cutting, reducing, and simplifying.
May 22, 2025
I already knew I was going to give this memoir 5 stars by the end of chapter 1. I can’t say enough how much I enjoyed this.
This is unlike any traditional historical account I’ve read regarding the lives of those living in Nazi Germany. It was simply invigorating reading the accounts by which the author painstakingly uncovers his family’s history (and secrets) and (knowing and unknowing) involvement within the National Socialist regime. There is so much to unpack in this memoir and such a beautiful testament to the authors work to display it in these ~200 pages.
This is unlike any traditional historical account I’ve read regarding the lives of those living in Nazi Germany. It was simply invigorating reading the accounts by which the author painstakingly uncovers his family’s history (and secrets) and (knowing and unknowing) involvement within the National Socialist regime. There is so much to unpack in this memoir and such a beautiful testament to the authors work to display it in these ~200 pages.
April 25, 2025
This book is the story of the author's great-grandfather, Siegfried Merzbacher, a German-Jewish chemist who collaborated with the Nazi regime. Merzbacher worked on various household products, including a toothpaste that used radioactive material. He worked gas masks and chemical weapons prior to the outbreak of World War II. His research was certainly taken into consideration for the later gassing of Jewish people during the Holocaust. The author takes a deep dive into Merzbacher's career and how he dealt with it. The book also takes a couple of really wild turns that I was not expecting.
As a history major who specialized in World War II history, I find books like this extraordinarily interesting and extremely important to the historical record. A lot of people, Nazis, former Nazi allies, collaborators, and look-the-other-way types buried their wartime activities. I am certain that a decent portion of those people regretted their part and had a hard time living with the things that they saw and did. Certainly, there were many that did not, especially when they got to waltz along through life without having to pay any price. I think in our modern era people get taken by charismatic people who manipulate them and use hot topics as a way to garner support and obedience. It was very clearly the same 80+ years ago. I also think that people look back at this time without thinking about how hard it was to live through, needing to make sure you had shelter and food, a job, or weren't sent to a camp to be killed. People probably did a lot of things they would not normally do to survive. I think all of those things should be considered when reading this book.
I listened to this Audible version on my commute to and from work at the beginning of the week. I actually bought this book because I thought it had something to do with people that used radium products, and, while it did, it was about so much more. I was really pleased with this purchase, and I was so into this book that I forced my coworker to listen to my dramatic updates about it. I thought the author did a really tremendous job researching chemical weapons and the use of radium in products. I thought it was really brave, in a sense, to confront the obvious collaboration of someone in your family with a group that is known to history for a major atrocity. I am sure the author and his family went through a lot of feelings during this process, and probably still are as the reviews and comments about this book roll in. I really, really enjoyed this book. It is absolutely one of the best ones I have read so far this year.
As a history major who specialized in World War II history, I find books like this extraordinarily interesting and extremely important to the historical record. A lot of people, Nazis, former Nazi allies, collaborators, and look-the-other-way types buried their wartime activities. I am certain that a decent portion of those people regretted their part and had a hard time living with the things that they saw and did. Certainly, there were many that did not, especially when they got to waltz along through life without having to pay any price. I think in our modern era people get taken by charismatic people who manipulate them and use hot topics as a way to garner support and obedience. It was very clearly the same 80+ years ago. I also think that people look back at this time without thinking about how hard it was to live through, needing to make sure you had shelter and food, a job, or weren't sent to a camp to be killed. People probably did a lot of things they would not normally do to survive. I think all of those things should be considered when reading this book.
I listened to this Audible version on my commute to and from work at the beginning of the week. I actually bought this book because I thought it had something to do with people that used radium products, and, while it did, it was about so much more. I was really pleased with this purchase, and I was so into this book that I forced my coworker to listen to my dramatic updates about it. I thought the author did a really tremendous job researching chemical weapons and the use of radium in products. I thought it was really brave, in a sense, to confront the obvious collaboration of someone in your family with a group that is known to history for a major atrocity. I am sure the author and his family went through a lot of feelings during this process, and probably still are as the reviews and comments about this book roll in. I really, really enjoyed this book. It is absolutely one of the best ones I have read so far this year.
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April 19, 2025Bailed at 33%
April 22, 2025
3.5 stars
May 1, 2025
Well-researched and well-written. the author delves into what his grandfather was really working on in pre-WW II Germany and later in Turkey.
In-depth research provides a shocking historical take.
In-depth research provides a shocking historical take.
August 30, 2025
A man confronts his family's past and his grandfather's role in creating chemical weapons for the Nazis.
September 1, 2025
It was too short.
August 17, 2025
3.5 stars rounded down. This book discusses the type of ethical/moral problems that I think are important to grapple with.
June 20, 2025
It was amazing to be able to read an account of such historic events from a point of view we don’t often see
October 1, 2025
This is a brilliant little book, and we'll worth your time.
June 9, 2025
this is a hard one to review. the central questions that sustain the book don’t have real resolutions, but there’s so much fascinating ephemera along the way. you want more of it all, but that’s the thing, there just isn’t more. records are lost, people are dead and also liars.
i have made some google searches related to this book that probably put me on watchlists lol
i have made some google searches related to this book that probably put me on watchlists lol
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