Lisa Kudrow Who Do You Think You Are? USA


Lisa Kudrow

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Emmy Award-winning actress and producer Lisa Kudrow

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first shot to fame in 1994,

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playing the eccentric Phoebe Buffay on the hit sitcom friends.

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She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Michel, and son, Julian.

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I was raised Jewish, but not religiously.

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We didn't belong to a synagogue...and, you know.

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My parents, brother, sister, and I are very close,

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and still live within a few miles of each other.

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I have, like, snippets of story.

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As far as I know, my family during the Holocaust were rounded up and shot.

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I'm a little anxious, I have to be honest,

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because I just have a feeling that there's some...

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powerful emotion coming my way.

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We're going to my parent's house.

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We're going to see my father who has the genealogy scroll,

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the family tree.

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What I feel is a lot of this is for my father

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because he's worked so hard on the family tree

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and it's his passion, so...

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There's some incomplete information,

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so it would be nice to fill that in for him.

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My father was...kind of this thug from Brooklyn.

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He met my mother and they got married and then he was drafted

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and that's where he decided he could become a doctor.

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You know, he got it in his head that he could become a doctor,

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and after he got out of the army, put himself through college,

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and then put himself through medical school.

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He worked one and two jobs while he was in school.

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He is the one who pulled the family out of...hard times.

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-Hi.

-Hi, how are you?

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-Hi, Dad. Hi, Mom.

-Hi, sweetheart.

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'My dad's parents were both Eastern European Jews.

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My grandmother, Gert, she came in 1921 for a better life,

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but it was never easy for her.

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Well, it's her family's history that my father and I want to look into further.

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My Grandma, Gert, had a lot of horrible things happen to her.

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A very sad life.

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The first child that was born was my brother.

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This is him. He died when he was four-years-old.

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My mother was pregnant with my sister at the time that he died.

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And my sister was born in 1929.

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I was born in 33, my father died in 1936.

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So I was three-years-old and here's what I remember.

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Believe me, I remember all our belongings were in the street.

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And I remember, my sister and I were holding on to each other,

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and we were both very frightened as we saw my mother in tears

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and screaming and all that stuff.

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And that was about the time my father died, so we were thrown out of our apartment.

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And then we moved to a tenement.

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It was a very difficult time, it was very hard.

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For my mother, can you imagine? My mother, what she must have gone through.

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And she loses her daughter when her daughter was 18-years-old.

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We were the only two left in our immediate family.

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When I was very young, she was babysitting me, and we were playing cards,

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and I asked her, you know, "Don't you miss your parents?"

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Cos I was little, and she started crying.

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It was, like, you know, 40 years later, right?

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And she's crying, and she's saying, "Yes."

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She said, "my mother was killed by Hitler With a knife in the back."

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-And, uh...

-Oh, oh. I know what she's talking about.

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I'll tell you. I'll tell you what she was talking about.

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It was the story that we heard from a cousin.

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It was 1947 or 1948.

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Knock on the door, and the door opens.

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I was there. I remember it like it was yesterday.

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I'm looking at the door opening,

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and there's this guy standing there,

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young guy in a uniform that I had never seen before.

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It turns out it was a Polish Navy uniform

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and his name was Yuri Barudin.

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Yuri told our family that he was playing in the woods near their shtetl,

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and the shtetl was called Ilya.

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And he came to the edge of the forest,

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and he could see that they were shooting,

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and he was watching his family being cut down by the Nazis.

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They killed all the Jews in town.

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My grandmother was one of them,

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Your grandmother's mother, your great-grandmother.

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Bah.

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This is tough, huh?

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-So that's the story that Yuri told?

-That's the story that Yuri told.

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-That's...

-Oh, my gosh.

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Is that that name he took? Is that a different name?

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-I don't know. I don't know.

-Is it a Jewish name? Barudin?

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I don't know that either. Barudin? I don't know.

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He smiled. He patted me on the head

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and that was the last I ever saw of him.

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He disappeared and then somehow we heard that he died.

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Died doing what?

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-Honey, I don't... I don't remember.

-OK. Oh, God.

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'That story still haunts my father.

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'I want to find out exactly what happened to my great-grandmother's family.

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'and if possible, if there is a final resting place,

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'pay my respects to those who were lost.'

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Lisa's heading to New York to see if she can find out anything about Yuri's visit there in the 1940s.

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She's meeting her father's cousin Gerry Meister

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at the Tenement Museum in Manhattan. Gerry was with Lisa's father

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and grandmother when Yuri visited New York.

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She's hoping her remembers some more details about this mysterious distant cousin.

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Ah!

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-Home sweet home.

-No!

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-No, this is...

-This is...?

-This is common.

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The window in between rooms to get some light.

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Is this like how my father grew up, by the way?

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-Do you remember his apartment?

-It wasn't quite this regal...

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-Oh.

-..your father's apartment.

-Are you serious?

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-It was like a black hole a third the size.

-OK.

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So it sounds like things were really very hard for my grandmother,

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which is an understatement.

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I would say that...she wasn't quite as poor as a church mouse.

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Church mouse had it better.

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She had the... She was the poorest person I knew.

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We were poor, but we were well-off compared to her.

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She must have been pretty strong.

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Huh!

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To live her life, she lost a husband, a son, a daughter.

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My mother and I came into the house and Gertrude was eating

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a slice of bread and an onion.

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And she was somewhat embarrassed and she said to my mother,

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"You won't believe how sweet this onion is, it's delicious."

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She was covering up that all she had was a crust of bread and an onion,

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that I saw with my own eyes.

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Gertrude's life in America had been marred by tragedy,

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ever since her arrival.

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Her mother was called Meri Mordejovich,

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and as far as the family know, she and most of the other Jews in Ilya

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were murdered in the Holocaust.

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This is your great-grandmother.

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This is my grandmother. This is Meri.

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Oh, really?

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-Doesn't it look like Gertie?

-Oh, yes!

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Oh, my gosh!

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Look, she's little. So was Gertie, too. Little!

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-And thin and...

-Not one of them five feet tall.

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Oh gosh, there's so many people they lost.

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And what do you remember about Yuri who told you what happened in Ilya?

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I remember...

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Yuri was on the flagship of the Polish merchant marine, the Batory.

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-The Polish merchant marine?

-Polish merchant marine.

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-It sailed out of Gdinya.

-Oh.

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And do you know what happened to him?

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Disappeared off the face of the earth. Never heard from him again.

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-I don't know what happened.

-All right.

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Maybe some anti-Semite found out he was a Jew and finished the job, we don't know.

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To try and find out what happened to Yuri and her great-grandmother Meri

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Lisa's travelling to Belarus.

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I bet it's really pretty. I'm excited on one hand to see

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where my grandmother lived cos she spoke really fondly of it.

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But then also just, um... Oh!

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..how they all met their end is making me...

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..a little nervous.

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She's flying to Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

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She's being met by Jewish historian Tamara Vershitskaya,

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-Lisa?

-Yes.

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Nice to meet you. My name is Tamara.

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-Tamara, Hi.

-Hi.

-Thank you.

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Minsk is about 40 miles southeast of Ilya,

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where Lisa's grandmother and great-grandmother lived.

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Before World War II, communities like Ilya

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had strong Jewish roots going back hundreds of years,

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But the war changed the culture of Eastern Europe forever.

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Before the war Yiddish was one of the four national languages.

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What?

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Yiddish was one of the four national languages.

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-Yes!

-Wow!

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-That's a presence!

-There was a Jewish Institute here,

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there was a Jewish Institute at the Academy of Sciences.

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Jewish culture was flourishing in Belarus.

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-Yes, that's a surprise, I understand.

-Wow!

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But after the war, after 1945,

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the situation was different and Jews didn't feel very safe, even, here.

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-Well, sure.

-And that's why many changed their names.

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Many registered themselves as Russians or Belarusians or Poles

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-or anybody else.

-Wow. I thought most of them were killed?

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Most of them, yes. Most of them, yes, that's true.

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After the war Jewish communities were reduced to...

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5% were left alive from the total community,

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10% at most.

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-Yeah.

-Oh, my gosh.

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Lisa has come to the state archives outside Minsk

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to see if she can find out what happened to

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her great-grandmother, Meri Mordejovich.

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Hello.

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You can see the lists of electoral board.

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-So, voters list.

-Oh, that's a voters list!

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-Voters list from what year?

-1935 and 1938.

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-So, on that list we can see Meri Mordejovich.

-Meri Mordejovich!

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-Yes.

-That's my great-grandmother.

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She lived in Ilya since her birth,

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-all her life.

-Wow. 1938. That makes her pretty old.

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-76-years-old.

-Elderly. OK.

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Is it possible to know, are there any documents

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if she were killed in Ilya, in that massacre?

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-Yes, yes.

-Oh, there are documents?

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We have some documents which we took from Moscow.

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They are copies of documents. The originals of them are kept in Moscow.

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Wow.

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It's terrible documents.

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It is a list of people who were killed, hung and tortured

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during the Second World War in Ilya.

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-And in that document we can see your relative.

-Oh.

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On that list you can see Mordejovich, Meri.

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It is stated here that she was Jewish and she was a housewife,

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and she was from Ilya and the last column is

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killed and burnt.

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Oh, my God.

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'I knew my great-grandmother was murdered,

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'But to hear the words "killed and burned,"

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'That's worse than I thought.'

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Lisa's on her way to Ilya where her grandmother Gertrude lived.

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And where her great-grandmother Meri was killed.

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She wants to know if there are any other details about Meri's fate

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that were missing from Yuri's story.

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-That's the place...

-Wow.

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..where the Mordejovich family lived.

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That's where Gertie grew up.

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This is the view that she saw.

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This is what I pictured.

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This is exactly what I pictured.

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It's unbelievable.

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I feel connected to the smile that would come across her face

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when she'd say, "It was so beautiful."

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And I'm so happy that she got to grow up here,

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and it's so pretty, and I'm also so...

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happy that she, um, got out,

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and her sisters got out,

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and I'm sorry for everybody else.

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My grandmother learned

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from Yuri what happened here.

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It's a huge loss. It's... it's...

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It's her whole family.

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It's her mother, who she loved, and she'll never see her again.

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She could have at least dreamt about seeing her one day

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or coming back to visit and being able to, like,

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breathe in this air and be here again, and that's gone too.

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Well, it would make sense for Yuri's story.

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He must have seen the Germans...

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take them out of the house

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and take them away.

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Tamara has tracked down an Ilya resident

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who was living in the town when the Nazi's arrived in 1941

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It's possible that she may remember Lisa's grandmother.

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SHE SPEAKS IN HER NATIVE TONGUE Oh, my gosh.

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My grandmother grew up here.

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TAMARA TRANSLATES

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-What was your grandmother's name?

-Grunia.

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Grunia, Grunia, Grunia, Grunia...

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SHE SPEAKS IN HER NATIVE TONGUE

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She lived near the river.

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We went to school together.

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We were like one family.

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I must tell you, when the Germans came we went to have a look at them.

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We had never seen Germans before.

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We were afraid of everything. We knew what war meant.

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In the first days they started to loot Jewish houses.

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Later on the synagogues were burnt down

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and our house was burnt down as well.

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The Jews escaped from their houses to the forest.

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They collected all the Jews.

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I tried to hide a small girl.

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A policeman came into the house,

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searched under the bed,

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took the girl, pulled her from under the bed by the hair,

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and threw her into the fire.

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Let God, nobody see it again.

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I pray to the God that it never happens again.

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'I'm sorry that she has to remember it.

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'I feel badly coming here and asking her to remember it,

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'cos it's got to be really hard.

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'It's so...sad.'

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Ugh. I...

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HITLER SHOUTS IN GERMAN

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In 1941, two years after Hitler gave the order to invade Poland,

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the Nazis invaded Belarusian territory.

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They soon occupied towns like Ilya

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and created ghettos for the Jews.

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A program of ghetto clearances began

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and the systematic murder of Jews the Nazis called "actions".

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-So where are we now?

-This is the...

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-This is the centre of Ilya.

-Uh-huh.

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-It used to be a market square before the war.

-Mm-hmm.

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And all the Jews were collected here in the market square.

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They were driven out of their houses,

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out of their homes in March 1942,

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-and this is the place where the selection took place.

-Selection?

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Selection.

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I've got evidence translated into English.

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"As soon as the Nazis arrived in Ilya,

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"they showed extreme cruelty toward the Jewish population.

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"They soon started going from home to home,

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"searching for every man, woman, and child.

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"They removed them from their homes

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"and forced them to run

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"to the designated central locations in the market."

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-That's where we are.

-Yeah.

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"The Germans started picking out from amongst the Jews

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"a few professional people that they felt were still needed at the time

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"This selection was done by a local Belarusian.

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"Everyone on the spot understood and there were no illusions of the fate of the people who were not selected.

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"During the Soviet time they had established a huge freezer

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"for fruit and meat products,

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"and next to it was a deep hole in the ground to store the ice."

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"This ice-storage area was used that day

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"for the mass burial of 900 Jews from Ilya,

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"men, women, children, and babies alike.

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"All the Jews selected to be killed in the market

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"were taken to this site.

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"On both sides of the entrance stood SS men armed with machine guns.

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"As soon as the people arrived,

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"they were ordered to remove their clothes and run inside,

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"where they were shot from all sides,

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"and fell directly onto the frozen pit.

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"This was the last walk of most of the Jews of our town

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"on this day of slaughter.

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"The murderers then poured oil onto the walls of the building

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"and set it on fire."

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"The local Christian population later told us that,

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"for many hours, they could hear from afar the screams and anguished cries

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"of the wounded who did not die from the bullets.

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"Thus ended Ilya, a Jewish community

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"with centuries of a glorious history."

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Huh.

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Tamara has found an eye-witness, Alexander Gavrilik

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who was a child at the time of the massacre.

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HE SPEAKS IN HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE

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-TAMARA TRANSLATES:

-After they were burned,

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the air here in Ilya was so heavy in the course of several months

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after the massacre, it was difficult to breath.

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Yeah.

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HE SPEAKS IN HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE

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-TAMARA TRANSLATES:

-So, the Jews were marched along this street from

0:21:570:22:01

the market. He remembers exactly that they were walking along

0:22:010:22:07

this street and we are going exactly the same way, the same path

0:22:070:22:12

and we are very close now to the place.

0:22:120:22:16

So you see this place is a bit higher than the rest of the area

0:22:160:22:23

-and that shed was standing right here.

-Uh-huh.

0:22:230:22:27

Jews were driven to this place, shot here and buried.

0:22:270:22:32

They were...

0:22:360:22:39

made to approach the edge of that pit

0:22:390:22:44

in small groups, two or three people,

0:22:440:22:47

and they were shot and fell down into the cellar.

0:22:470:22:51

-The next two or three and the next, and the next.

-Oh.

0:22:510:22:57

Oh.

0:22:570:22:58

I'm glad that I got to see, witness, acknowledge...

0:23:270:23:31

..what happened to my family here

0:23:330:23:36

and pay my respects at their final resting place.

0:23:360:23:39

I am glad that I got to do that.

0:23:390:23:43

And that...moment is worthwhile.

0:23:430:23:48

OK.

0:23:490:23:52

I mean, these people were no threat. They were nothing.

0:23:550:23:58

It's just the ravings of a madman who decided that Jews didn't

0:23:580:24:02

fit into the way he saw the human race.

0:24:020:24:05

That's just his opinion.

0:24:060:24:08

But it caused a genocide and...

0:24:100:24:13

..everyone said, "Yeah, OK."

0:24:150:24:19

Maybe I'm getting too philosophical now, but...

0:24:190:24:24

that's what fear can whip people into.

0:24:240:24:28

You make people afraid enough

0:24:280:24:32

of something completely manufactured,

0:24:320:24:35

and you can drive them to become murderers,

0:24:350:24:38

cold-blooded murderers.

0:24:380:24:40

And I always want to look at the...

0:24:400:24:43

When there are pictures, I always want to see the faces of the people that were doing the killing.

0:24:430:24:50

Lisa now knows the full story of what happened to

0:24:570:24:59

her great-grandmother during the Holocaust.

0:24:590:25:02

But she still wants to find out about Yuri,

0:25:020:25:05

the man who sought out her family in New York

0:25:050:25:08

to tell them of the massacre.

0:25:080:25:10

Now I think I'm just going to look for Yuri Barudin.

0:25:100:25:14

I'm going to look him up online and see if I can find anything about

0:25:140:25:19

his visit who he is, anything.

0:25:190:25:21

OK. I'm going to try Batory and Barudin.

0:25:210:25:26

Boleslaw?

0:25:290:25:30

Never heard that name before.

0:25:300:25:33

Barudin, Gdynia.

0:25:330:25:36

Gerry said he was from Gdynia.

0:25:360:25:38

Batory. OK.

0:25:390:25:44

OK, "List or manifest."

0:25:440:25:48

"Employed on the vessel as members of crew."

0:25:480:25:51

Barudin.

0:25:530:25:55

I don't know if that's him, but it's the...

0:25:570:26:00

The last name's right.

0:26:000:26:01

Poland, the Batory.

0:26:010:26:04

He's crossed out.

0:26:040:26:05

What does that mean, I wonder?

0:26:050:26:07

It says, "Discharged February 4, 1950, Gdynia."

0:26:070:26:12

He's the only Barudin.

0:26:120:26:14

Well, it's the only Barudin.

0:26:140:26:17

The ship's manifest states that Yuri was discharged in Gdynia.

0:26:170:26:23

So Lisa is heading there in search of more information.

0:26:230:26:26

So we're going to, we're going to go to Poland.

0:26:260:26:30

We'll go to Gdansk to get to Gdynia.

0:26:300:26:34

I keep trying to make a joke, "Gdyn-you know!"

0:26:360:26:39

SHE LAUGHS

0:26:390:26:40

Yeah, so we can see if there's any information we can get

0:26:420:26:47

on Yuri Barudin, or Boleslaw.

0:26:470:26:49

And it would be nice to know what happened to this...to Yuri.

0:26:490:26:56

I just... It's worth a shot.

0:26:560:26:58

You know, like, the people we saw in Ilya,

0:26:580:27:01

they're burdened with the memories of what they witnessed

0:27:010:27:05

and it would be the same for Yuri,

0:27:050:27:07

if he were to live a long life and I hope he did.

0:27:070:27:11

I hope he got married and had a family

0:27:110:27:14

and carried on. I hope... I hope that's what happened.

0:27:140:27:18

But my father...

0:27:190:27:21

You know, and Gerry remember thinking that he died.

0:27:210:27:25

Lisa's come to the state archives in Gdynia

0:27:300:27:33

to look for any records on Boleslaw Barudin.

0:27:330:27:35

-Good morning.

-Hello.

0:27:430:27:44

My name is Chris, Krzysztof Dzieciolowski in Polish,

0:27:440:27:47

-but call me Chris. It will be easier.

-OK, thank you. I'm Lisa.

0:27:470:27:50

-Follow me.

-OK.

0:27:500:27:51

'I mean, what we have found here?'

0:27:510:27:54

This is, um... this is a registry card

0:27:540:27:58

for the people who were coming to Gdynia and settling down.

0:27:580:28:03

So as we can see, this is his surname, Barudin.

0:28:030:28:07

This is his name, Boleslaw.

0:28:070:28:09

Why change it to Boleslaw from Yuri?

0:28:090:28:12

Or why did he...

0:28:120:28:14

Why did his family in Brooklyn know him as Yuri?

0:28:140:28:17

When living in Poland, you wouldn't like to be...

0:28:170:28:19

-Yuri.

-Yuri.

-OK.

0:28:190:28:21

Yuri is a typical Russian or Belarusian name.

0:28:210:28:26

OK, he needs his name to be Polish if he's living in Poland.

0:28:260:28:29

Yes. Then we can read this document further on

0:28:290:28:33

and it says that he's married.

0:28:330:28:36

SHE GASPS Where? Where?

0:28:360:28:40

-This is the name of his wife.

-Stefanie.

0:28:400:28:43

-And we know that they had a son.

-SHE GASPS

0:28:430:28:46

Andrezj, who was born on May 16th of 1949, here in Gdynia.

0:28:460:28:54

He'd be today, what? 59.

0:28:540:28:57

Oh, my gosh.

0:28:570:29:00

He could still be here.

0:29:000:29:02

Yeah, he could still be here.

0:29:020:29:04

Aren't there censuses or voter registration or...?

0:29:040:29:09

Or look in a phone book, see if he's still here!

0:29:090:29:11

-This is a nice phone book from 2002.

-OK.

0:29:110:29:16

Gdynia.

0:29:180:29:20

Uh-oh.

0:29:240:29:25

Barudin! SHE GASPS

0:29:250:29:27

What? Boleslaw.

0:29:270:29:29

It's him!

0:29:290:29:31

In 2002! Could he still be alive? That's...he's old.

0:29:330:29:40

SHE GASPS That's him. It's him.

0:29:400:29:43

Oh, no.

0:29:450:29:48

OK.

0:29:480:29:51

YOU should call.

0:29:510:29:53

I think you should call.

0:29:530:29:54

-If he doesn't speak English...

-But if he went to America...

0:29:540:29:58

OK. All right, so I should call.

0:29:580:30:00

You think it's OK for me to call?

0:30:000:30:02

-Yes.

-OK.

0:30:020:30:04

Oh, my gosh.

0:30:040:30:05

Boleslaw.

0:30:140:30:16

PHONE RINGS It's ringing!

0:30:180:30:19

'Hello?'

0:30:240:30:25

Hello, is this Boleslaw?

0:30:250:30:27

It's... it's Tomek?

0:30:300:30:32

Tomek Barudin? OK.

0:30:340:30:36

You're speaking with... My name is Lisa Kudrow.

0:30:390:30:42

Yes, mm-hmm. Is that your...?

0:30:480:30:50

Oh, that's your grandfather. OK.

0:30:530:30:57

Is he, um... Is he...here?

0:30:570:31:01

He is?

0:31:030:31:05

Yeah. That's his house. Right. And then you answered.

0:31:100:31:14

Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh!

0:31:140:31:17

Um, my father met your grandfather

0:31:170:31:20

a long, long, long time ago...

0:31:200:31:22

..and I think we're related.

0:31:230:31:26

So I wanted to meet him, cos my father...

0:31:260:31:29

The family wanted to know whatever happened to him.

0:31:290:31:33

I'm in Gdynia.

0:31:380:31:39

Yes.

0:31:390:31:41

OK, great. All right.

0:31:450:31:47

See you soon.

0:31:470:31:48

All right, bye.

0:31:480:31:50

What?

0:31:500:31:52

Oh, my gosh. He's alive.

0:31:520:31:54

That's...I can't believe it.

0:31:540:31:56

I... I...

0:31:560:31:58

I was actually fantasizing that,

0:31:580:32:00

"Wouldn't it be great if there was finally, like,

0:32:000:32:03

"A happy story in all of this, and he were alive?"

0:32:030:32:05

But I thought, "It's impossible." It's so great.

0:32:050:32:08

SHE GASPS

0:32:080:32:09

-Thank you very much for your phone.

-No problem.

0:32:090:32:12

I'm so excited to meet him.

0:32:190:32:22

I'm so happy I have something happy to tell my father and Gerry.

0:32:220:32:27

SHE GASPS They, oh...

0:32:270:32:30

They were certain he was dead.

0:32:300:32:33

Now I'm going to find him

0:32:330:32:35

and finally give my father a survivor's story that he didn't know anything about.

0:32:350:32:39

-Hello.

-Hello.

0:32:470:32:50

HE LAUGHS

0:32:500:32:51

-What a surprise.

-I'm Lisa.

0:32:510:32:54

Hi. I'm Tomek Barudin.

0:32:540:32:55

Oh, my... We're related.

0:32:550:32:57

-Nice to meet you. Yeah, come on.

-Hi.

0:32:570:33:00

-Let's have a seat.

-OK.

-I prepared a wonder for you.

0:33:000:33:04

Oh, my gosh.

0:33:040:33:06

I'm a little overwhelmed. I'm excited.

0:33:060:33:09

I have to try not to get overwhelmed.

0:33:100:33:12

Wow.

0:33:130:33:16

And here is the... Here is the Boleslaw Barudin.

0:33:260:33:30

Hello.

0:33:300:33:31

Oh, it's so nice to see you.

0:33:380:33:40

It's so good to meet you.

0:33:400:33:42

Oh, my gosh.

0:33:420:33:44

It's good to see you.

0:33:580:34:00

My father remembers meeting you - him and his cousin Gerry.

0:34:000:34:04

He was about 14.

0:34:040:34:06

That's him.

0:34:060:34:09

That's my grandmother, Grunia.

0:34:090:34:13

Oh, they took pictures?

0:34:220:34:25

Oh, no.

0:34:260:34:27

Your mother was the sister? Half-sister?

0:34:310:34:35

HE SPEAKS IN HIS NATIVE TONGUE

0:34:350:34:39

Wow. He only saw them one time, right?

0:34:490:34:52

-Only one time.

-Yeah.

0:34:520:34:53

Yeah, and then it was too dangerous to stay in contact.

0:34:570:35:00

You know, my father also remembers that you came,

0:35:050:35:08

and you were the one who told them what happened in Ilya,

0:35:080:35:12

to Meri and the Mordejovich family.

0:35:120:35:18

My father thinks that you were a witness.

0:35:180:35:21

HE TRANSLATES

0:35:210:35:24

Oh.

0:35:310:35:33

Oh, they... they murdered everyone.

0:35:490:35:52

But how did he escape or survive?

0:35:520:35:57

HE SPEAKS IN HIS NATIVE TONGUE

0:35:570:36:00

Mm-hmm.

0:36:230:36:24

-Siberia?

-Siberia, yeah.

0:36:320:36:34

Awful.

0:36:340:36:36

HE SPEAKS IN HIS NATIVE TONGUE

0:36:360:36:39

Wow, that's risky.

0:36:520:36:53

-That's very brave.

-Yeah, that was...

0:36:550:36:58

15?!

0:37:060:37:08

I just had one more question

0:37:150:37:18

which is why he wanted to find them in New York?

0:37:180:37:20

HE SPEAKS IN HIS NATIVE TONGUE

0:37:200:37:24

He wanted to know anything.

0:37:280:37:31

-Anyone.

-Yeah, anyone who...

-To find any family.

0:37:310:37:35

You know, my father and his cousin...

0:37:460:37:50

-for some reason, thought that he died.

-No!

0:37:500:37:55

My father is going to be so happy.

0:37:550:37:58

He won't stop crying. I know it.

0:37:580:38:00

'It's finally good. It's finally happy.'

0:38:030:38:05

It's so...

0:38:050:38:07

SHE SIGHS It's such a relief.

0:38:070:38:09

Thank you.

0:38:090:38:11

Thank you.

0:38:120:38:13

'It was so good to see him and his family,

0:38:130:38:16

'his beautiful family!

0:38:160:38:17

'His son and his son and they're all nice.'

0:38:170:38:22

Thank you so much.

0:38:240:38:25

Mostly, I'm just glad that he had a family

0:38:250:38:29

and I got to meet him.

0:38:290:38:32

And now my father can call or email,

0:38:320:38:34

and they can be in touch.

0:38:340:38:35

This journey's been more than worth it, even the hard parts,

0:38:380:38:42

even... even before I knew that he was alive and well.

0:38:420:38:46

Alive and well.

0:38:460:38:48

And happy, yeah.

0:38:490:38:51

It's definitely worth it.

0:38:510:38:54

Yeah, I can't... I have to...

0:38:540:38:55

I can't wait to tell my father about it.

0:38:550:38:58

So, um, I can't wait.

0:38:580:39:02

I'm sorry.

0:39:020:39:04

Hi, Dad.

0:39:050:39:07

Um... You'll have to check your email.

0:39:080:39:12

I met Yuri.

0:39:140:39:16

SHE LAUGHS

0:39:160:39:17

Yeah...

0:39:170:39:19

And his whole family.

0:39:190:39:22

Lisa's returning to Los Angeles

0:39:230:39:25

to tell her father everything she's learned on her journey.

0:39:250:39:29

She's arranged for him to speak with Boleslaw

0:39:300:39:33

for the first time in 60 years.

0:39:330:39:36

-Hi.

-Hi, my love.

0:39:390:39:41

My father is about to see Boleslaw and speak to him.

0:39:410:39:45

Since 1947 or 1948,

0:39:450:39:47

that was the last time they laid eyes on each other,

0:39:470:39:50

So this is really exciting.

0:39:500:39:52

-Hello? Hello?

-'Hello?'

0:39:540:39:57

-Yep. Now you see me?

-'Yeah.'

0:39:570:39:59

Hello, Boleslaw.

0:39:590:40:01

Tell him that I remember him very well.

0:40:060:40:10

What I'd like to know is, does he remember me?

0:40:100:40:13

'OK.'

0:40:130:40:14

HE SPEAKS IN HIS NATIVE TONGUE

0:40:140:40:17

Oh, my God, is that wonderful, wonder...

0:40:230:40:25

What a wonderful man!

0:40:250:40:27

You may not know the story,

0:40:270:40:30

but when Boleslaw came to the house

0:40:300:40:32

and he met my mother, who is his aunt,

0:40:320:40:35

he felt very sorry for her,

0:40:350:40:37

because, you know, we didn't have very much money,

0:40:370:40:40

and he actually left 50 for my mother.

0:40:400:40:44

Tomek, look how a young sailor,

0:40:440:40:48

who was maybe 22-years-old, had such a good heart.

0:40:480:40:53

-HE LAUGHS

-That's very good.

0:40:580:41:02

OK, well, this has been very wonderful,

0:41:030:41:06

very touching for me.

0:41:060:41:07

-And all the best from us as well.

-Mwah!

0:41:160:41:18

-That's right.

-'OK.'

0:41:180:41:20

Bye-bye.

0:41:200:41:21

How many years ago was that that you saw him?

0:41:240:41:27

And then here he is, and you thought he was dead, and he's not.

0:41:270:41:30

It's too good to be true.

0:41:300:41:31

-That's all right, Dad. Oh!

-It was tough. It was tough.

0:41:320:41:36

It was tough. It's all right.

0:41:360:41:38

It's OK.

0:41:380:41:40

It's all right.

0:41:400:41:42

I'm OK.

0:41:420:41:44

I just love that.

0:41:440:41:46

The kind of hardship and life-and-death struggles

0:41:510:41:58

that my father, grandmother, great-grandmother had,

0:41:580:42:02

it just never ended.

0:42:020:42:04

In some ways, it changes me,

0:42:040:42:06

cos I feel even more fortunate

0:42:060:42:09

to be the recipient of all the...

0:42:090:42:14

..of all the sacrifices that were made by everyone before me.

0:42:160:42:19

I do feel really lucky that I got to take this trip

0:42:230:42:28

and discover Boleslaw for my father.

0:42:280:42:31

And the other thing is, with all the...

0:42:310:42:35

tragedy and horror that I had to look at,

0:42:350:42:39

then you find Boleslaw,

0:42:390:42:43

who went through a lot himself

0:42:430:42:45

and is smiling and enjoying his son and his grandson

0:42:450:42:49

and his great-grandchildren, and...life goes on.

0:42:490:42:54

I mean that's the big take-away for me from this,

0:42:540:42:58

that life goes on, no matter what.

0:42:580:43:02

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