My ancestor would have known Anne Frank...
Comedian, actor and Great British Bake Off host Matt Lucas’s look into his family’s roots took him to the dark days of Nazi Germany. STEVEN MURPHY finds out more
THE latest episode of family history show Who Do You Think You Are? sees comedian, actor and presenter Matt Lucas set out on the trail of his beloved late grandmother Margot, a refugee from Nazi Germany during WWII.
Travelling to Berlin and Amsterdam to uncover Margot’s story, the search brought Matt’s own upbringing into focus.
“I was brought up in a reformed Jewish household,” he explains.
“I would go to synagogue most Saturday mornings and Hebrew classes on a Sunday. There was always something a bit naughty about going to synagogue, and then quietly going to watch Arsenal afterwards. You weren’t really supposed to do that!
“My mum is a typical Jewish mother. She is full of love. If I go round to dinner, she puts the food down and says, ‘Right, there’s more carrots, there’s more peas, there’s more potatoes, there’s more chicken.’ And then at the end she goes, ‘What are we going to do about that tummy, eh?’”
Margot was mother to Matt’s mum and came to the UK in 1939 as a Jewish refugee.
“She was very German and a formidable woman and very strict,” he recalls. “When I was young, I was a little scared of her. But as we both got older, she mellowed and we became really close. We would chat for hours and hours on the phone.”
Matt headed to Berlin on the search of Margot’s early life, to try and understand what she experienced as part of a Jewish family in the lead up to the war.
“I think while you grow up, with older figures in your family, you just sort of take them at face value, and you don’t really grill them on what they did,” he says.
“I would love to reconnect with her and one way I can do that is maybe by finding out some things about her that she never told me.”
After uncovering what happened to the close-knit extended family Margot left behind, Matt travels to Amsterdam.
Some of Margot’s relatives fled to neutral Holland, only to then have it invaded by the Germans. mans. There, he discovers a previously iously unknown family connection. n.
“My ancestor would have known Anne Frank, absolutely lutely the writer of one of the most important books ever written,” n,” he says. “If you know no other story about what happened to the e Jews in the Second World War, you know the story of the Frank nk family.”
After his emotional jourrney, Matt says, “My granddmother always made it clear ear how proud she was of me – and now I’m proud of her.
“I feel very, very lucky that I’ve had this opportunity to learn about my family history and nd to reconnect with grandma Margot. argot. It helps keep her alive for or me because I really miss her.”