Was my father the Nazis’ last victim?
In 1938, 11-year-old Robert Borger escaped Vienna thanks to a newspaper ad and a kindly British couple. But he could never escape the terror unleashed on Austria’s Jews...
AMOnG the listings for houses, stamps and musical instruments for sale in the summer of 1938, the Manchester Guardian carried a series of advertisements from austrian parents seeking homes in Britain for their children.
In the space of five months, the newspaper ran a total of 80 of these ads.
Just a few lines long, and written in stilted english, there was no disguising the desperation in them. ‘Fervent prayer in great distress’ read one appeal, asking for a home for a ‘ healthy, clever, very musical’ 13-year- old. another begged for a philanthropist to take ‘a much gifted girl’ as a foster child.
Journalist Julian Borger grew up with a vague impression that his father Robert had come to Britain from Vienna as a result of a newspaper ad, and after his father’s death he managed to track it down. It read simply: ‘I seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent boy, aged 11, Viennese of good family.’
Borger decided to find out what had happened to his father, and the other children in these ads, and how they made it to Britain.
Julian’s grandfather, Leo, had owned a shop in Vienna that sold radios and musical instruments. Despite a long history of persecuting and banishing its Jewish population, by the beginning of the 20th century, the austrian capital had become a place where Jews could prosper. Half of Vienna’s doctors and dentists were Jewish.
LEO’S only child, Robert, had a happy childhood which came to an abrupt end in March 1938 with the anschluss, Hitler’s annexation of austria. Immediately, Vienna’s Jews started being attacked and harassed in the street and in their homes, and Jewish businesses were confiscated. Soon Jews began disappearing, taken off to camps such as Dachau, from which very few of them ever returned.
With their businesses and assets seized, most Jews couldn’t afford to get out of the country. there was no
Oskar Schindler or nicholas Winton to help get their children to safety, and the Kindertransport scheme, which eventually saw Britain take in nearly 10,000 children, didn’t start until november 1938.
the situation was so desperate that 500 Viennese Jews committed suicide in the first two months after the anschluss. appealing to British
benefactors to take in their children was a last throw of the dice for many parents.
Robert’s mother, erna, managed to find a job as a domestic servant in London, but her visa did not allow her to live with her son. through the newspaper advert Leo had placed, they found someone who would care for Robert.
after selling some diamonds he had kept hidden in the soles of his shoes, Leo was able to pay for Robert and erna’s passage to england in October 1938. He stayed behind in Vienna for five months, hiding in basements, until he could scrape together the money to make his way to Britain.
In his advertisement, Leo had asked for a ‘kind person’ to take his son and, by great good fortune, he found just that. teachers nans and Reg Bingley, who lived in Caernarfon, were ‘an open tap of kindness which was never turned off’, Julian Borger writes. Robert lived with them until he had finished his education, while still staying in touch with his parents.
eleven-year-old Robert was a nervous, withdrawn child. nans had to take the whistle off the kettle because the sound reminded him of the Hitler Youth rampaging through the streets.
When Robert was told he would have to register with the police, he fainted in terror. Yet he excelled at school and got a first-class degree, becoming a lecturer in psychology at Brunel University in London.
To hi his four children, hild Robert was ‘ a serious, melancholic man’, an austere figure who never talked about his childhood in Vienna.
In 1983, when he was in his mid-50s, Robert committed suicide.
He had been disappointed professionally: on the verge of becoming a professor at Brunel, he had been passed over in favour of a younger man. He blamed himself for mentioning thi this man’s ’ name t to th the university’s i i administration, believing ‘if he had kept his mouth shut, they might have forgotten to ask the outsider to apply. He sank into gloom’.
Robert left a suicide note, in which he asked if he had loved his children ‘in the wrong way’ and pushed them too hard academically.
After his death, his family were shocked to discover he’d had a long affair which resulted in a four-yearold son, whom he had never met. ( Admirably, Julian’s mother insisted her children should get to know their half-brother.) He was clearly a man under pressure, but Nans, his loving foster mother, had no doubt what the real cause of his suicide was. ‘Robert was the Nazis’ last victim,’ she told Julian. ‘They got to him in the end.’
Another Viennese boy, Georg Mandler, whose advert was published six days before Robert’s, and who also became an academic in the field of psychology, was taken in by a small private boarding school in Britain. Arriving in October 1938, he found the other boys unexpectedly friendly, but was horrified by the awfulness of the food.
When war was declared in September 1939, Georg didn’t share the general feeling of shock. ‘My war had started earlier,’ he said.
SOME children were not as lucky as Robert and Georg. The foster family of 14-year- old Gertrude Batscha, advertised as ‘well-mannered, able to help in any household work’, treated her like a skivvy. When she was found crying from homesickness and worry about her parents, she was scolded. Despite this, she felt ‘nothing but gratitude’ for the people who took her in and undoubtedly saved her life. Gertrude never saw her parents again.
Borger managed to trace eight of the children who featured in the advertisements, and concludes that life in Britain had been ‘a lottery’ for them. Some were welcomed into warm and loving families, a few were exploited. All of them struggled with their terrible past later on in life, and most tried to conceal it from their children. This is a compelling story, desperately sad yet shot through with moments of selflessness, hope and kindness, and Borger skilfully weaves the different strands of the narrative together. Walking through Vienna’s na’s Westb Westbahnhof railway station, he stops by the statue of a refugee boy sitting on a suitcase, a memorial to those children who were forced to leave their families.
The statue is dedicated to ‘ the British people with deepest gratitude’. Beneath the dedication is a line which appears in both the Talmud and the Koran: ‘ Whoever saves a single human life, it is as if he had saved all of mankind.’