On Who Do You Think You Are?, the barrister and television personality learned of his family’s painful past. In this new series, he and others in similar situations delve deeper still
In 2018, Robert “Judge” Rinder took part in the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are?, discovering the story of his maternal grandfather, a Holocaust survivor who found a new life in the Lake District as one of the 300 Windermere children. It was a gripping episode – tragic and hopeful – and one of the best the series had done yet. In My Family, the Holocaust and Me (BBC One), a two-part series, Rinder delves further into the stories of his ancestors and helps other descendants of Holocaust victims and survivors to find out the family stories they had previously heard only in hints and whispers.
It is a remarkably moving endeavour, although, given its subject, that is hardly surprising. Rinder sets out to learn what happened to the family on his paternal grandfather’s side. When he visits Harry Rinder in his flat in London, the camera cuts briefly to a photo on the side, of Robert in his wig and robes. His grandfather was an “original cockney”, born in Stepney in 1928, and his grandfather, in turn, was from Lithuania. They do not know what happened to that side of the family, but Harry gives his blessing for his grandson to visit Lithuania, and the town where the family once lived, to investigate.
