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This gripping family memoir of grief, courage, and hope tells the hidden stories of children who escaped the Holocaust, building connections across generations and continents. In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out advertisements offering their children into the safe keeping of readers of a British newspaper, the 83 years later, From a Viennese radio shop to the Shanghai ghetto, internment camps and family homes across Britain, the deep forests and concentration camps of Nazi Germany, smugglers saving Jewish lives in Holland, an improbable French Resistance cell, and a redemptive story of survival in New York, Borger unearths the astonishing journeys of the children at the hands of fate, their stories of trauma and the kindness of strangers.
Report
Riveting Borger s haunting, revelatory book exists in the shadow of a parent who, like many survivors, spoke little about his past. Part of Borger s task is to illuminate that anguishing tension between forgetting and remembering. New York Times Book Review
Moving A family memoir, a collective biography, and a gripping detective story rolled into one. The Guardian
Powerful compelling a gripping addition to the literature on inherited trauma. The Observer
This remarkable book in itself exemplifies the significance of facing up to and finding ways of living with an almost unbearable past. Financial Times
The stories [Borger] has been able to salvage are remarkable threads connecting the present to a dark past, marked by the will to survive. Intriguing and humane, a worthwhile addition to Holocaust studies. Kirkus Reviews
Borger fills out the historical context with great clarity These losses were unmentionable, a heavy burden growing heavier and darker the more it was ignored. At the same time, those who lived told tales shot through with the joy of survival, the wonder of escape and the lives it made possible. Times Literary Supplement
[Borger s] ability to piece together so many different stories is remarkable [He] shows great curiosity, tenacity, and compassion as he interviews survivors and their descendants. Jewish Book Council
Part memoir, part detective story profoundly affecting. Philippe Sands, author of East West Street
Tender, evocative, and deeply moving. Jonathan Freedland, author of The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World
Powerful, eloquent I loved it. Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes
