I Seek a Kind Person

'I look for an au pair for my girl, aged 14; well educated Jewess.' 'Who would give a home to a grammar school scholar, aged 14; healthy, clever, very musical.' 'I seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent boy, aged 11.' In 1938, Jewish families under Nazi rule were scrambling to get their children out of the Reich. Newspaper advertisements were one avenue of escape. Scores of children were 'advertised' in the pages of the Manchester Guardian, their virtues and skills extolled in brief. The right words in the right order could mean the difference between life and death. Reading these advertisements eighty-three years later, the Guardian's Pulitzer prize-winning World Affairs Editor, Julian Borger, found his surname and an address beneath it: 'Borger, 5/12 Hintzerstrasse, Vienna 3'. The address had been his grandparents', the intelligent boy was his father, Robert. In I Seek A Kind Person, Borger retraces his father's escape and survival, as well as the remarkable stories of six other Viennese children who sought and found sanctuary in the same way. Blending memoir and history with investigative journalism, Borger returns to Vienna with his grandparents' passports, emblazoned with swastikas and a 'J' for Jew on the first page, to retrace their lives. In doing so, he excavates the secrets of his own family history and its long shadow.