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 don't think I'm being cynical. Honestly I don't.

It/she was just so phoney.

I don't understand how anyone can deny Holocaust

Nutters

is it repeated on BBC4 - I've looked but can't find anything!

I did

Ummm - I've never really liked her ahundredtimes, but actually I warmed to her in the documentary because she seemed more 'human' and more genuine. Lol, we will have to agree to differ

Message withdrawn

I cried at Paxman too, when he cried in the hall. I LOVED Julian Clary and his family snobbery.

But that one was very managed, very obvious. WHY go to Cape Town to ask what her father had done, why not ask him fgs? It was phooey.

Her father said at the start that she would find it was a story of victims becoming persecutors - and that IS the story, but the programme ignored it, in favour of her with her lipstick and terrible coats being mawkish.

Yes you have a point about the Cape Town thing and asking her father.....

I thought the uncle who survived was going to turn out to have been a collaborator rather than a partisan. I agree she came across as a bit fake, but presumably all these programmes must be pretty staged as they must have had hot and cold running researchers getting all the facts lined up before they even start filming. Maybe the subjects of previous programmes were just better actors than Kaplinsky?

The coat was pretty bad, I'll give you that.

AND she went on about how she used to come to SA and 'be followed' - don't tell me she NEVER asked him why he left.

Also, it's interesting that he left never to return. Just as it's interesting that his family escaped Belarus and fled to SA and escaped the holocaust.

All that crap about the Apothecary. She had way too much editorial control.

Do you know, I paid less attention the 'terrible coats' than I did to the fate of those murdered children. I'm a bit funny like that.

No, Pruners, she wasn't. In Germany, it's a criminal offence to deny the Holocaust. Isn't that where he was prosecuted?

I could play a guess where she lives game, but I wont .....

Desiderata, Krakow is a beautiful city, make sure if you get the time to get a tour guide to show you around the city, we had one and she was well worth it. They can also take you to the Plaszow concetration camp which is just outside of Krakow and you can also see the factory that Schindler used to keep the jews employed in the war.
I have just googled tour guides and this person came up, they are well worth it.privateguidesineurope.com/poland_anna_g.html
Also make sure you can get a guided tour of Austchwitz you can book it on the web in the UK.

I can see her pleading letter now: 'In my family we have anti-apartheid activists and holocaust victimes. For the purposes of this programme I will, of course, pretend to know nothing about it so I can react with quiet tears, which WILL NOT smudge my mascara at the appropriate times.'

Then half-way through the producers were in despair. 'Get the cousin out, he's got integrity, he's interesting, he has a story' and he was flown in.

Oh don't be so pompous Aloha.

Was this was the first time you realized that the Nazi's murdered children with their bare hands?

background on how the programme was made here:
news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article2884351.ece

Don't be so callous and pleased about it.

ooh (sharp intake of breath). Please play nicely my nerves won't take it

BigGitDad ... how very kind of you

Really, how kind you are! I will use your link, and come January, no doubt bore you all with my experience.

I do know that from the middle of December, the big freeze kicks in. We shall have snow at Christmastime, something I long for my son to see.

Wasn't part of the point that her family didn't talk about this stuff? The extended family of my grandparents' generation had a pretty varied history during the war sundry people in prison under regimes of both stripes, an uncle who lost an arm fighting with the International Brigades, cousins of my mothers who weren't actually cousins but were very distant relatives adopted out of an communist orphanage after the war because their mother had killed herself following the Russian invasion of Berlin none of this was ever talked about. And none of them had been Nazis, so they didn't have a particular motivation for hiding it. That's just how it was. So actually I don't find her family setup particularly implausible, myself.

Pleased about what?

It was a badly-made programme, manipulative and phoney. They usually do it better than that one.

I'm not being callous, I don't mean to be anyway.

can't find a repeat - damn!