An enthralling and personal Holocaust memoir from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
”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.
Julian Borger is The Guardian's World Affairs Editor, based in Washington. He covered the Balkan wars in the 1990s. He also served as The Guardian's Middle East correspondent in Jerusalem and its Washington Bureau Chief. Julian was part of the Guardian team that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism for its coverage of the Snowden files on mass surveillance. I Seek A Kind Person is his second book. His first, The Butcher's Trail, was published in 2016.
Michaela Kalowski is an interviewer, moderator and curator for writers and ideas festivals. Highlight interviews include Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Michelle de Kretser and Stan Grant. She's curator of Big Weekend of Books, ABC RN’s annual on-air writers’ festival. She produces and hosts a monthly books conversation event for Petersham Bowling Club. Michaela has conducted radio interviews and presented programs across ABC radio & TV. She's co-presenter and co-writer of a two-part podcast for ABC RN, tracing part of her family’s history, called Laya’s Way Home.
This livestream will be open captioned.
