Did anyone else sob and sob through Natasha Kaplinski's Who Do YOu Think You Are programme tonight?

[aloha]

Because I did, and dh was suspiciously silent. My god, how those people suffered
Her cousin was so charismatic too.

I was miffed because I was watching recorded stuff and when I turned it off there was 15 minutes to go on this - so, so annoyed!

The bit i saw was sad enough

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The cousin singing in the empty ruined synagogue was one of the most haunting things I've seen on telly for a good while. And not overplayed, which is even rarer.

I thought the bit where her cousin sang in the ruined synagogue was one of the most moving things I've seen on TV - a lament, a celebration and a memorial all in one.

Great minds...

I read about the programme in the Sunday Times before I actually watched it.

Harrowing.

He was her cousin - mutual grandparents, I think. They were Russian Jews, and many Kaplinskis were murdered in Nazi ghettos including a nine year old and two year old girl (I am crying to type that). Her cousin's father and mother were part of an extraordinarily brave - heroic - group of partisans who literally lived in the freezing Russian countryside, in a tiny hidden hut, for three years - three years - sabotaging the Nazis and surviving. They found a ruined synagogue - the Jews who went there long murdered - and her cousin sang a Jewish prayer. It was so moving it pinned you against the wall with the waves of emotion.

I didn't see it. Damn.

However, the series is regularly repeated on other BBC channels, so I'll keep an eye out.

And yes, I would have cried.

Anyone remember the one with Jeremy Paxman? He found out that his great-grandmother was thrown out of lodgings because she wasn't married to her current lover. She had stacks of kids and they all lived in a little room no bigger than a toilet. They sent her to the workhouse. I don't recall that she died there, but it was tough.

And Paxman broke down. The bulldog actually cried and he said 'I wouldn't recognize her if I saw her in the street, but she was mine, the bastards.

Damn, I meant to watch this, does the BBC repeat it later in the week?

Shit I missed it. I went to Austchwitz three years ago and it is an unbelievable, haunting place. Quite a few people I have met have had nightmares having been there.
It's a lesson in history for everybody there.

I wrote this in the other thread but I felt so sad when they found out what happened to the uncle that committed suicide and his family.

Totally disturbing but fascinating viewing

Stephen Fry had family who were murdered there too. That was a moving programme as well.

Pruners - NK's great grandparents had 3 sons, one of whom was NK's grandfather and he emigrated to S Africa before the war. The only 2 sons remained in Poland. Tragically one son committed suicide after his 2 year old daughter was brutally murdered by Nazi death squads.....the other son was spared by the Nazi's because he was a doctor

I think the most upsetting thing is that despite the Holocaust, atrocities still continue across the world (I'm thinking of Rwanda, Serbia etc and of the 6 year old girl in Iraq who was hung by an angry mob for accepting sweets from a soldier)...which is why I tend to remain deliberately ignorant re current affairs

Sorry - repeating Aloha

It was incredibly moving. The bit where her cousin sang in the ruins of the synagogue at the end...

It was Belarus, wasn't it.

I thought one of the saddest things was that the older little girl who was killed by the Nazis (aged 9) - the one they had the photo of - and no-one knows her name. And no-one ever will now.

My Grandad visited Belson about 30 years ago and he said it was haunting. There wasn't even any birds singing in the trees, it was totally silent.

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Really? I thought it was AWFUL. It was all so fake - of course she knew what her father had done in South Africa, and she did know what had happened in Belarus - everybody said it at the start.

I thought it was phoney. I hated her in that ridiculous hood.

Cousin was good. I'd rather have heard more from him, than her with her terrible anodyne remarks.

This programme works best when interesting people go on a real journey of discovery, she didn't, she was pretending.

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I'm going to Krakow in December and I intend to visit Auschwitz whilst I'm there.

The biggest altercation I have ever had on MN involved a poster who thought the holocaust was a western invention. I have never felt so bloody angry in my entire life.

Thanks aloha! I shall look out for the programme repeat.

My God and I thought I was a cynical person!

The most interesting story was about her family in South Africa. The European Jews in South Africa are fascinating I think both post and pre war, but that was glossed over.