When Joe Dunthorne set out to write a history of his family, he thought he knew the basic outlines of his great-grandparents’ story. Over the years, he had heard about their 1935 flight by car from Nazi-controlled Germany to a safer life in Turkey where other Jews had moved. In Ankara, his great-grandfather Siegfried Merzbacher worked as a chemist for the Turkish Red Crescent, similar to the Red Cross. His daughter, Dunthorne’s taciturn grandmother, usually ended the story there. After her death, her family archives led to surprising and disturbing discoveries that Dunthorne relates in his unusual and very readable memoir, Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance.
The archives contained a trove of letters, diplomas, war medals, interviews conducted with his grandmother and a memoir by his great-grandfather. Nearly 2,000 pages long, the memoir was written in German in the last decade of Merzbacher’s life and translated and abridged by his son. As Dunthorne picked up clues that led to more research, a picture emerged: Merzbacher worked in a laboratory in Oranienburg, Germany, where he produced radioactive items for the home, including a very popular radioactive toothpaste. In the 1930s, he was given two other tasks: making and testing gas mask filters and developing a secret chemical weapons laboratory where he would be the director. He knew that making chemical weapons was a clear violation of the law, but was assured that the military did not plan to produce these chemicals; their development would make Germany prepared in case the need arose. He was advised to take the job because otherwise they might find another chemist “with fewer scruples.” As events unfolded, however, he became responsible for developing weapons for the Nazis. His role in creating weapons of war tormented him for the rest of his life.
As Dunthorne was exploring family history, his mother, quite by coincidence, was preparing the family’s application to reclaim German nationality as descendants of victims of Nazi persecution. They found themselves exchanging documents on subjects of mutual interest, and following their research findings is a compelling part of Children of Radium. A poet and novelist (Submarine, The Adulterants), Dunthorne’s careful attention to detail will hold the reader’s attention as he tries to determine what is true, partially true or false about his family’s past.
