On September 15, 1983, college student Julian Borger returned from his dentist appointment to find his mother sitting at the kitchen table, a horrified look on her face. Seeing a young police officer standing in the background, Julian knew something bad had happened. Julian’s father, Robert, had taken his life with whiskey and painkillers. His body was found a long way from his home, ostensibly to spare his family the pain of finding him. 

Making those difficult calls to notify family and friends of Robert’s death, Julian reached out to Nancy Bingley, the Welsh woman who had been Robert’s foster mother when, as a young boy, his family had sent him to Britain to flee Nazi Austria. Nans, as she was called, answered the phone, and hearing the news told Julian: “Robert was the Nazi’s last victim. They got to him in the end.” 

In the early 1930s, Vienna, Austria was an exciting and relatively safe place for Jews to live. The culture was rich. Museums, operas houses, restaurants buzzed with activity. Jewish families ran their businesses, educated their children, and took pride in their city. But underneath the glossy surface, danger was building. And when Adolf Hitler returned to the country where he was born, Jewish parents had to make plans for their survival. While it was difficult for adults to obtain the necessary paperwork to leave Austria, children were given more leeway. The Manchester Guardian became the best way for Jewish parents to find suitable homes for their children in Great Britain.

Since Robert had left Vienna 45 years ago, Julian believed that career setbacks, not the Nazis, had provoked his father’s death. But Nans’ words stuck, and Julian wondered whether what his father had experienced as a Jewish refugee had dogged him for his entire life. He found no clues when going through his father’s papers. While Robert was a respected college professor, he never put down on paper what he had gone through, leaving behind his family and arriving alone in a country where he didn’t speak the language and was mystified by the customs.

In 2020, Julian, now a journalist, was writing a story about West African asylum seekers being deported in the last few months of Donald Trump’s first administration. Corresponding with Ruth Hargrove, a retired law professor, he found they had common ground. “We keep living the same trauma,” Ruth wrote to him. “My father escaped from Vienna in 1938, just after the Gestapo took over…My parents’ wounds never healed.” She confirmed what Julian had suspected: both their fathers suffered from PTSD.

That exchange jarred Julian’s memory about the ads in The Manchester Guardian. He wrote to the Guardian’s archivist and received a page with six ads. “The middle ad had four name in it,” he writes. It read: “I Seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent Boy, aged 11, Viennese of good family. Borger, 5/12 Hintzerstrasse, Vienna 3.”Julian was now on a mission to locate the descendants of some of the other families who had sent children to Britain before the war. Turns out that some of those refugees kept diaries and could help Julian to piece together what his father had gone through. Julian learns that his father made out better than others because of the home created by Nans. There was nothing Nans could do, however, to replace his family and ease his loneliness. The scars were deep and even after Robert married and had children, he still mourned the family he lost. 

I Seek a Kind Person is not just about Robert Borger, but about the many other children and their families whose lives were disrupted and, in too many cases, ended, because of what happened during World War II. And, unfortunately, with families now being separated by the Trump Administration, we are creating another generation that will suffer physically and psychologically because of the cruelty of leaders who care only about power, not families. 

I Seek a Kind Person
Julian Borger

Top photo: Shutterstock

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