I Seek A Kind Person: My Father, Seven Children and the Adverts That Helped Them Escape the Holocaust by Julian Borger looks at the experiences of Jewish children whose families sought to get them out of Austria after the Anschluss of March 1938 (when Nazi Germany occupied and annexed Austria) and away from persecution by placing adverts in the Manchester Guardian newspaper (now The Guardian).
These adverts sought families to take in Jewish children and teenagers, often framing them as offers to work or advertising their particular skills and language ability. These efforts sat alongside the more famous Kindertransport, the organised evacuation of Jewish children mainly to Britain during 1938 and 1939. Jewish families sent their children off (often alone) through to Britain in the hopes of avoiding the restrictions placed on emigration of whole families by the Nazis, the hope of saving their children, hoping to have time to flee themselves after winding up businesses, and many other reasons. In many cases, only these children survived the war and Holocaust having escaped the Nazis and were only able to find out what happened to their families at the end of the war or much later in life.
Julian Borger, a journalist with The Guardian, became interested in this because his own father was one of these children. After his father’s suicide in 1983, and coming across the actual advertisements later in life, Borger wanted to find out more about these children – what happened to them, what was their experience, what paths did they take. This book is a fascinating detective story with Borger using his years of experience and contacts to try and track down surviving children or their families and find out their experiences, but also maybe to try and learn more about his father.
There are some incredible and sad stories in this book, and some special people – both the children and those who took them in and helped them. The book also tells a range of Jewish experiences - refugees who found themselves in a new home, torn from their language, culture, and religion, but also welcoming kindness, internment as ‘enemy aliens’, joining the Allied armies to do what they could to fight the Nazis, the experience of the camps, Jewish resistance, and even those who escaped all the way to Shanghai, China only to find themselves under Japanese rule. It gives a great insight into how quickly things changed for Jews in Austria during 1938 – many of those interviewed were highly integrated and not particularly religious and yet found themselves quickly targeted by the new government and abandoned by fellow Austrians. Some held onto their sense of identity and language through their lives, while others rejected it.
Borger also goes into the experiences of what happened after – how people found out about what happened to their families, how they sought to rebuild their lives, how they carried their trauma with them and how it even moved beyond them into following generations. Borger also explores how the kindness and support of those who took them in as frightened teenage refugees shaped their lives. Many of these stories of helpers are inspiring – people who helped others simply because it was the right thing to do.
Read more by Julian Borger
Read more about the Kindertransport
Novels
Books about those who helped Jews during the Holocaust
In the Garden of the Righteous
CCL Staff Lists
This book was featured on a booklist from my colleagues at Fendalton Library. Check out other booklists made by CCL staff
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