I Seek a Kind Person: My Father, Seven Children and the Adverts That Helped Them Escape the Holocaust

“Violence is often just the beginning,” writes Guardian editor Borger (The Butcher’s Trail) in this heartbreaking family memoir. “The real story is also the years and decades that follow, all the days the wounded and bereaved survivors have to struggle through, only to bequeath the anguish to another generation.” Searching for answers about the 1983 suicide of his father and still angry about the impact it had on his childhood, Borger was surprised to discover that Jewish children living in Nazi-occupied countries, among them his father, were advertised in the Guardian in the 1930s by parents hoping to send them to safety in Britain. In an effort to understand his father’s state of mind, Borger tracks down the seven other children listed on the same classifieds page as him. What he finds are harrowing stories of desperation and guilt. “These children had arrived as young teens in Britain bearing the responsibility of having to save their mothers and fathers through the bureaucratic machinery of a new country, in a foreign language,” Borger writes. Often their efforts were fruitless, and they had to cope with survivors’ guilt after losing their entire families. Eventually, Borger begins to forgive his father: “The writing of this book unearthed my resentment of him but also brought its antidote.” It’s a unique and deeply moving exploration of the generational trauma left in the Holocaust’s wake. (Jan.)