Vignettes from the WWII, Holocaust, and Post-War Era

( I Seek A Kind Person: My Father, Seven Children, & the Adverts that Helped Them Escape the Holocaust . (2025) Julian Borger. London: John Murray Press).   When Julian was 22, his father committed suicide at age 56 or 57. Award-winning journalist Julian Borger found the ads his grandfather also placed in the Manchurian Guardian in 1938 (Julian’s employer, now The Guardian ) , to find homes for Jewish children in Great Britain. Two teachers from Northern Wales accepted his son, Bobby, for the rest of the war.  Kindertransport began on December 10 th , 1938, and saved thousands of Jewish children from Nazi slaughter by moving them to England. Hitler was born in Austria and his ascent to power unleashed hatred and violence in the streets of Vienna. Jewish students were expelled from schools and beaten by the Gestapo Brownshirts. As adults, these survivors suffered PTSD, a common term in the 21 st century. Soldiers got combat fatigue, children were not considered durin...

   Hitler Youth 1933-1945:   Hitler abolished all other youth groups in Germany. In the 1930s, there were over 100,000 members between the ages of ten and eighteen in “Hitler Youth;” by December 1933 they numbered two million. In 1939, 82% of the eligible youth belonged to the Nazi movement. They wore uniforms, sang the same songs, focused on conformity, and were used as a tool to undermine traditional family and community structures and traditions. The “League of German Girls” were taught nursing, cooking, child care, sewing and sports like gymnastics. Boys were paramilitary and trained in Nazi ideology, physical fitness, and sports like boxing. Tragically, at the end of the war old men and youth in their early teens were forced to serve in the “Home Guard” defending Germany. Thousands in these “boy brigades” perished.