In 2021, Julian Borger discovered that his father, Robert, was the ‘intelligent boy, aged eleven’ described in an advert in the Manchester Guardian.
This revelation led to a global investigation into the secrets of his family’s past and the remarkable stories of the other advertised children. Travelling to Vienna and to his father’s foster home in Caernarfon, Wales, he retraced Robert's escape, whilst searching for the other children and their family members, unearthing unpublished memoirs that reveal what happened after the adverts were placed to escape the Nazis.
From Viennese archives to the Shanghai ghetto, internment camps and family homes across Britain, forests and concentration camps in Germany, escape routes and refugee hostels in Holland, a secret Austrian cell within the French Resistance, and a surprising discovery in New York, Borger follows a kaleidoscope of lives at the mercy of the hands of fate, uncovering unbelievable stories from around the world and revelations about members of his own family.
Julian Borger is the Guardian's World Affairs Editor and was part of the team that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Snowden files. He was also awarded an Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) medal in 2013, the Paul Foot Special Investigation Award and the One World Media Press Award in 2016 for a feature story on war crimes in Syria.