Holocaust still casts a dark shadow over families
IN powerful scenes, Robert Rinder explores tragic Holocaust stories in the wake of his experience on Who Do You Think You Are? A couple of years ago on the ancestry show, the TV judge found out his grandfather’s devastating Holocaust story.
Morris Malenicky was the only survivor in his immediate family of the war. His parents, four sisters and a brother all died in a concentration camp in Poland in 1942.
Robert says: “I’ve come to realise, as the grandson of a holocaust survivor, that its shadow, its dark impact has affected everything. It’s shaped my entire family.
“The trauma of what happened has caused decades of silence in families but now it’s important to talk about it.”
In this moving two-parter Robert sets others off on their own little Who Do You Think You Are? journeys.
He helps second and third
MY FAMILY, THE HOLOCAUST AND ME WITH ROBERT RINDER BBC1, 9pm
PICK OF THE DAY generations of families to retrace their relatives’ footsteps and find out what happened to them.
We meet Bernie, from Plymouth, who heads to Frankfurt to find out about his family. Also, musician Natalie Clein and her sister Louisa Clein, best known for playing Maya in Emmerdale, investigate their Dutch roots.
Robert also explores further his own family’s Holocaust stories.
He travels to Treblinka, the site of a concentration camp in Poland, to discover how his great-grandparents, great-aunts and greatunc uncle came to meet their en ends.
And watch out for a heart-wrenching interview with a 97-year-old survivor in Belarus, who shares some devastating m memories. It all leads to a te tearful monologue from Ro Robert about human evil.