"Who do you think you are?"

Hubby and I watched Who do you think you are?, the "new" series on SBS last night. It was brilliant!

I put "new" in inverted commas as the episode we saw last night - on Stephen Fry - was made in 2006 (or 2005?). I've been poking around the web this morning and it would appear that SBS is screening a selection of episodes from the UK series and then following it with an Australian series that it has commissioned. The BBC show has an entry on Wikipedia and it suggests that the episodes we'll be getting span series one (Bill Oddie, Jeremy Clarkson), series two (Stephen Fry, Gurinda Chadha), and series three (Nigella Lawson, Julia Sawalha). The twelve Australian episodes will feature, amongst others, Jack Thompson, Geoffrey Robertson, Kate Cebrano, and Ita Buttrose.

The Stephen Fry episode was incredibly moving and so very interesting.

Fry began the episode by saying that others would probably describe him as "quintessentially British". I can't disagree. One only has to picture him at the wedding of the Prince of Wales in his morning suit to feel that the quintessentially British label certainly fits! But, he said, this isn't so. Stephen Fry is the descendent of European Jews. Fortunately both his mother and his father are still alive and he was able to quiz them both about their sides of his family.

The program took Fry to the places where his ancestors lived, and in some cases, died. In Britain he met a man who had worked with his grandfather in the sugar beet factory that his grandfather came from Surany (Slovakia) to work in. He followed the trail of his paternal grandmother and discovered that her grandfather had spent much of his life in the poor house and eventually died of tuberculosis. In Surany he met a man who survived the concentration camps and whose uncle travelled with Fry's grandfather to the UK. He was able to find the grave of his great-grandfather. His mother gave him a photo of his great-grandmother and his mother's aunt, uncle and cousins. The family never spoke of them and she wondered what their fate had been. Fry was able to discover the awful truth - that the family were murdered in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and elsewhere. In Vienna he discovered the home of his great-grandfather and great-grandmother - Berta and Samuel Braun (his mother's maternal grandparents). A plaque had been erected on the apartment building they shared with other Jewish people. Everyone in the house had been deported to a ghetto at Riga, Latvia and not one of them survived. (Only a small number of the 65,000 Viennese Jews who were sent to Riga survived).

While Stephen Fry knew that he came from a boisterous Eastern European Jewish family, he didn't know that members of his family had perished in the camps. It was an incredibly emotional journey for him - and for me. I wondered how long the show took to film the episode. It was a lot to take in, emotionally, over a short period of time and it must have been incredibly challenging for him.

It was fascinating to see the process of following the stories. Fry had some concrete names and dates, as well as family photos. He was able to use archives, websites and a very talented Slovakian genealogist called Vladimir to help him unravel the mystery of his family.

It was also very helpful for us, the viewers, to have such an articulate and intelligent 'guide' on our first outing. Fry was acutely aware of the "there, but by the grace of god go I" factor in his life. It was the job offer to his grandfather that brought the family to the UK and essentially saved them from the gas chamber. It's sobering to realise that the Holocaust was less than 70 years ago. This is not some medieval massacre, this is modern history. A very modern history as even in the filming of the program, Fry came across anti-Semitic attitudes in Europe. I find it difficult to comprehend! I *know* that prejudice exists, but I guess I don't really believe it until it hits me in the head!

I hope the subsequent episodes are as interesting as this one has been!

Related links:
BBC episode website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/familyhistory/get_started/wdytya_s2_celeb_gallery_03.shtml