Julian Borger: I Seek a Kind Person

”I seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent boy, aged 11.”

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. 

This extraordinary personal advertisement is the starting point for Julian Borger’s’ quest to understand his father’s past. What follows is an enthralling memoir, family history and detective story all in one, as Borger brings to life in vivid detail the Holocaust escape stories of a handful of children and families and traces the resonance of these events through generations. 

Julian is joined in conversation by Michaela Kalowski.