Sue’s Nazi shock!
There’s joy and heartbreak for Sue Perkins as she traces her German roots in the new series of Who Do You Think You Are?
Sue Perkins and Matt Lucas are famous for hosting that most genial of TV shows The Great British Bake Off. But when they delve into their family histories for the latest series of Who Do You Think You Are?, the banter is replaced by sadness. Incredibly, both Sue and Matt discover they have ancestors who were caught up in the Nazi advance across Europe.
Sue, whose dive into her family’s past launches the 19th series of the genealogy show this week on BBC1, is full of gags as her journey begins. She’s poring over the Perkins family photo albums with her comedy partner Mel Giedroyc, joking about the fact that Mel’s ancestors were important enough to have a town in Lithuania named after them.
Then, when Sue discovers her mother’s grandmother Anna Tislau came from Lithuania and travels to the Baltic state to learn more about her, she discovers her own ancestors enjoyed the same honour. ‘This place is called Tislauland, because this is where the Tislau family had their very large farm,’ historian Regina Kopilevich tells her.
‘I’m so pleased, even though there’s nothing left of the farm,’ beams Sue. ‘It might be a pile of icy mud now but I don’t care — it’s home! And after joking about Mel having a town named after her, to discover my family had one too is extraordinary. The parallels between my life and Mel’s are remarkable.’
Sue’s joy turns to horror, however, when she discovers what became of the Tislau family later. Historian Professor Christoph Mick reveals they were originally from Germany and returned there when Hitler came to power in the 1930s, only to fall foul of the Nazis’ desire for genetic ‘purity’. Sue is stunned when she learns about the tragedy that befell them.
She then follows her greatgrandmother Anna’s journey. She left the family home in Lithuania to marry German-born tailor Emil Muller in London in 1901, but Emil was removed from his home and interred as an enemy alien in a camp on the Isle Of Man during the First World War. ‘It explains the deep sense of shame I’ve always carried,’ says Sue. ‘It comes from my great-grandfather being put behind barbed wire.’
In a later episode, Matt Lucas also discovers he has relatives who were affected by the rise of the Nazis. ‘I was very close to my grandmother Margot, who fled from Berlin to England in 1939, and wanted to know about her early life in Germany,’ explains Matt. But he then discovers other Jewish relatives were not as fortunate as Margot. After fleeing Germany, some became trapped in the Netherlands when the country was invaded by the Nazis.
Matt uncovers their fate — and a remarkable family link to diarist Anne Frank. −Tim Oglethorpe Who Do You Think You Are?, Thursday, 9pm, BBC1.