{"id":2672,"date":"2025-04-28T06:02:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T06:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=2672"},"modified":"2025-04-28T06:02:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T06:02:59","slug":"children-of-radium-a-buried-inheritance-by-joe-dunthorne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=2672","title":{"rendered":"Children of Radium \u2013 A Buried Inheritance by Joe Dunthorne"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Dunthorne\u2019s \u201cChildren of Radium\u201d is a masterful work of investigative memoir that begins, as many family histories do, with a simple curiosity about ancestry. But what unfolds is far from the heroic tale of Jewish escape from Nazi Germany that Dunthorne initially expected to write. Instead, he discovers the unsettling truth that his great-grandfather, Siegfried Merzbacher<\/a>\u2014a German-Jewish chemist\u2014was developing chemical weapons for the Nazi regime before fleeing to Turkey in 1935. This revelation sends Dunthorne on a quest across Europe and Turkey, probing the radioactive soil of his family\u2019s buried secrets.<\/p>\n

The Weight of Complicity and Memory<\/h2>\n

At the heart of this memoir is Siegfried\u2019s own 2,000-page rambling confession, in which he acknowledges: \u201cI confess to my descendants who will read these lines that I made a grave error. I have betrayed myself, my most sacred principles\u2026 I cannot shake off the great debt on my conscience.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> These words haunt the narrative as Dunthorne attempts to reconcile the grandfather his family knew\u2014the one who brushed his teeth with radioactive toothpaste and helped develop the \u201cDoramad\u201d brand\u2014with the man who worked in a \u201cpleasure palace\u201d laboratory developing mustard gas and other chemical weapons that would later be used in atrocities.<\/p>\n

Dunthorne\u2019s prose is deceptively conversational, drawing readers into what feels like an intimate chat about family records, only to deliver gut-punches of historical horror:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat made listening to this even worse was that the interrogator was me. This was the interview from 2012, the one where she told me to read a book about it, which I had taped but had never actually played back\u2014for understandable reasons.\u201d<\/h4>\n

This self-implicating honesty is what makes \u201cChildren of Radium\u201d transcend the typical family memoir genre. Dunthorne isn\u2019t merely uncovering his great-grandfather\u2019s complicity; he\u2019s examining his own willingness to believe comfortable myths about his family\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

Methodical Research Meets Poetic Sensitivity<\/h2>\n

What distinguishes this memoir is Dunthorne\u2019s background as both novelist (Submarine<\/em>, Wild Abandon<\/em>, The Adulterants<\/em>) and poet (O Positive<\/em>). His research is meticulous\u2014he follows paper trails through archives in multiple countries, interviews historians, and even purchases a Geiger counter to test radiation levels in Oranienburg, where unexploded WWII bombs still lurk beneath the radioactive soil.<\/p>\n

Yet he approaches this material with a poet\u2019s eye for metaphor and a novelist\u2019s appreciation for character. When examining medical records from his great-grandfather\u2019s psychiatric hospitalization, he notes how the doctors broke Siegfried\u2019s experience into discrete themes: \u201cfamily, school, work, marriage\u2014so that all the mess of his life was tidied up and given shape.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> This observation serves as a meta-commentary on memoir writing itself\u2014the necessary but ultimately imperfect organizing of human experience into narrative.<\/p>\n

Beyond the Personal: The Ripples of Complicity<\/h2>\n

Dunthorne wisely expands his investigation beyond Siegfried\u2019s story. The memoir\u2019s most powerful sections explore how chemical weapons developed in German laboratories were ultimately deployed in places like Dersim (now Tunceli), Turkey, where the Kurdish Alevi population was gassed in caves by the Turkish military in 1937-38. Dunthorne travels to this still-militarized region, where the past literally lurks beneath the surface\u2014bones remain scattered in caves, and the town bristles with military watchtowers.<\/p>\n

Here, Dunthorne confronts his great-grandfather\u2019s legacy most directly when a local human rights activist tells him: \u201cIf your great-grandfather was involved in this massacre, this genocide\u2014if he had any single role in this genocide\u2014we forgive him.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> The moment is devastating precisely because forgiveness comes from those who have no obligation to offer it.<\/p>\n

The Women of the Story: Elisabeth and Lilli<\/h2>\n

Perhaps the book\u2019s most revelatory material concerns the women in Siegfried\u2019s life\u2014his sister Elisabeth, who ran a children\u2019s home for Jewish youth until the Nazis forced her to flee, and his wife Lilli, whose relationships with other women (including Elisabeth) were something Siegfried acknowledged but never fully processed.<\/p>\n

Elisabeth emerges as a moral counterweight to Siegfried. While he made ethical compromises that preserved his career and eventually facilitated his family\u2019s escape, Elisabeth repeatedly put herself at risk to protect vulnerable children<\/a>. Dunthorne discovers that she worked until the end of her life to document the fates of her colleagues who stayed behind to care for children at the home, many of whom were eventually murdered at Auschwitz.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s treatment of Lilli\u2019s sexuality is handled with nuance. Dunthorne writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may also have been comforting to think that his wife\u2019s relationships were not infidelity but grief.\u201d<\/h4>\n

This insight about Siegfried\u2019s rationalization perfectly captures how family narratives are constructed to preserve comfortable illusions.<\/p>\n

Stylistic Brilliance and Occasional Digressions<\/h2>\n

Dunthorne\u2019s prose shifts effortlessly between deeply researched historical analysis and moments of wry, dark humor. He describes his grandmother as having been \u201cfunny and honest and even when that honesty tipped into cruelty she used to get away with it because she laughed often with her head thrown back.\u201d<\/strong><\/em> This kind of characterization brings his ancestors to life as complex, contradictory beings.<\/p>\n

The book occasionally meanders, particularly when Dunthorne focuses on his own discomfort during research trips or when he tries to relate historical events to contemporary concerns about environmental contamination. These digressions, while interesting, sometimes dilute the power of the central narrative.<\/p>\n

A Powerful Meditation on Inheritance<\/h2>\n

What makes \u201cChildren of Radium\u201d exceptional is how it transforms from a detective story about a specific family into a universal meditation on inheritance\u2014what we choose to remember, what we deliberately forget, and how complicity ripples through generations.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s final section, where Dunthorne and his family receive German citizenship as descendants of victims of Nazi persecution, achieves a bittersweet resonance:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was interesting, simultaneously fraudulent and profound. While no burdens were suddenly lifted, there was a flash of connectedness, a sense of generations spreading out behind and ahead of us, like when you pull apart a paper chain and suddenly see all the human-shaped figures, dangling and holding on to each other.\u201d<\/h4>\n

This image perfectly encapsulates the book\u2019s themes of connection and disconnection, how we are both linked to and separated from our ancestors\u2019 actions.<\/p>\n

Final Assessment: A Landmark of Investigative Memoir<\/h2>\n

\u201cChildren of Radium\u201d stands alongside works like Edmund de Waal\u2019s \u201cThe Hare with Amber Eyes\u201d and Philippe Sands\u2019 \u201cEast West Street\u201d in its fusion of personal and historical investigation. But Dunthorne brings unique literary talents to this crowded field\u2014his novelist\u2019s eye for revealing detail, his poet\u2019s precision with language, and his willingness to implicate himself in the comfortable mythologies families construct.<\/p>\n

The book succeeds both as gripping historical investigation and profound meditation on moral responsibility. It asks difficult questions: How do we judge those who made compromises to survive? What do we owe to the victims of weapons our ancestors helped create? And perhaps most haunting: What comfortable myths about our own lives might future generations dismantle?<\/p>\n

Highlights:<\/h3>\n

Exquisite prose that balances historical research with intimate family narrative
\nCourageous excavation of uncomfortable truths about familial complicity
\nPowerful global connections between seemingly private family decisions and world-historical events
\nNuanced treatment of complex characters, particularly the women whose stories history often overlooks
\nThoughtful reflection on memory, selective forgetting, and how family narratives are constructed<\/p>\n

Areas of Critique:<\/h3>\n

Occasional digressions that dilute the narrative\u2019s focus
\nSome passages where personal discomfort during research overshadows historical material
\nA few sections where contemporary environmental concerns feel somewhat tenuously connected to the historical narrative<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren of Radium\u201d is not just a remarkable family history\u2014it\u2019s a profound meditation on how the past continues to emit its invisible influence, altering the present in ways we might prefer not to acknowledge. Like the radioactive elements that give the book its title, the half-life of complicity extends far beyond a single generation.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Dunthorne\u2019s \u201cChildren of Radium\u201d is a masterful work of investigative memoir that begins, as many family histories do, with a simple curiosity about ancestry. But what unfolds is far from the heroic tale of Jewish escape from Nazi Germany that Dunthorne initially expected to write. Instead, he discovers the unsettling truth that his great-grandfather, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}