Rashida Jones Who Do You Think You Are? USA

Rashida Jones is investigating her mother's family history.

She went to Manhattan and never came back.

Tracing her mysterious grandmother Rita's years in Manhattan.

I'm definitely interested to know what she was doing. SHE LAUGHS

She discovers unexpected Eastern European roots...

It's really, really, really senseless.

..that change the way she relates to her Jewish heritage.

I feel like a miracle.

Actor and writer Rashida Jones lives in Los Angeles.

Her many film credits include I Love You, Man and The Social Network.

And she currently plays the role of Ann Perkins on Parks and Recreation.

Rashida is the daughter of music industry legend Quincy Jones

and actress Peggy Lipton.

And this mix of African-American and Jewish cultures has formed her individuality since she was a child.

I always identified with both, it was important to me to be black

as was Judaism and the culture that came with being Jewish.

I was always encouraged to be balanced and I don't want to chose.

My Dad's always been obsessed with our genealogy and our family tree,

so he did all types of research and had our family roots traced.

And it's been nice because he loves to talk about it.

In college I fell into a larger Jewish community and was going to synagogue on high holidays

and becoming more interested in the historical roots and everything.

But despite my interest in Jewish culture,

I don't know very much about my personal Jewish family history on my Mom's side.

I did spend a lot of time with her parents, my grandpa Harold and grandma Rita growing up,

but both of them have since passed away.

I was very close with my grandmother and I always have, like, felt connected to her.

I have her art all over my house and I feel like she's always with me.

I didn't know anything really about her upbringing, I just knew her with my grandfather.

But my feeling about my grandmother is she was very elegant,

had wonderful taste, was an incredible artist,

really beautiful, and that's pretty much it.

To find out more about her grandmother, Rita,

Rashida is going to visit her mother, Peggy,

to see what she knows about Rita's early years.

She's meeting with her mother and sister, Kidada,

at her father's house in Los Angeles to get her started on her journey.

What do you know, Mom? What do you know?

Well...

even though my mother kept a great record of her photographs, I don't know that much about her life.

My mother, Rita, even though she didn't have a formal education,

she was very erudite, very sophisticated and had incredible taste.

Like here's a picture of her that I love. Look, how cute is that?

Oh, God! So pretty!

-Looks like Rashida.

-Irish. Yeah, It does a lot.

-Beautiful.

-She was born in Ireland and left there

and came to the States to live in Nyack, New York,

with some Jewish relatives and her sister, Pearl.

And Rita was apparently 14 or 15.

Rita went to a month or two of school and split.

She left. She left Nyack, she left Pearl, she left everybody.

-To go to Manhattan?

-Yes. She went to Manhattan and never came back.

Her sister, Pearl, once said to me very late in life,

"Oh, God! Rita was like... She was... She used to dance."

I didn't even know Rita was a dancer.

-Pearl went down to New York...

-Were there feathers?

Not quite that. You know, she was much classier than that. My mother was so classy.

But apparently there was this thing in New York that were called taxi dancers.

-This is what Pearl told me.

-OK, so when did she meet Grandpa?

She married Harold in '41.

I think she was, like, 30.

And at some point she changed her name from Rosenberg to Benson, right?

Yeah. It was very confusing at the time. Was she a Rosenberg? Was she a Benson?

-Do you think it was something to do with the religious, cultural implications?

-Yeah.

I would imagine that Jews were not looked on with much affection at all.

They may have changed their name out of fear.

Rashida has discovered that her grandmother dropped out of school

and left for Manhattan, but she has no idea when this happened.

She's travelling to New York to try and find out more about Rita's life there.

It seems as though my grandmother was reinventing herself, going from a Jewish immigrant teenager,

to a taxi dancer, to a sophisticated wife and a mother, and that's really interesting to me.

Rashida is heading to the New York Public Library's Steven A Schwartzman building

to meet with Professor Kirsten Fermaglich,

who's been looking for information on Rita's life in Manhattan.

-I want to find out some things about my grandmother...

-OK.

..who was Rita Benson,

but at some point was Rosenberg. We're not quite sure when she changed her name.

And I also want to know... There's this big chunk of time

where she just disappeared into the city before she met my grandfather,

and nobody knows what she was doing. SHE LAUGHS

Well, this is a really interesting thing to explore.

-"Rita... Rosenberg."

-Uh-huh.

Cool. New York passenger lists.

-Oh, 1926.

-You can get the actual record.

-Oh, cool.

-There you go.

-Awesome.

Look, there it is, Pearl and Rita Rosenberg.

God! 13 and 18!

It's crazy to come to a different country without your parents.

-Was that uncommon?

-It wouldn't have been that uncommon.

-Right.

A lot of families when they emigrated would come over in that way.

-Jews in particular would come over in bits and pieces.

-OK.

SHE SIGHS

"Mother, Jeanie Rosenberg." OK, so Jeanie. Right, that's my great-grandmother.

I have to wear my glasses. Sorry.

-Oh, they're going to join a relative or friend.

-Uh-huh.

OK, now this is really weird. Uncle, Mr Elliot Benson.

So he's a Benson. Now I'm really confused.

BOTH LAUGH

I wonder... Oh, maybe they took their uncle's name

in an attempt to acclimatise.

It's possible. It definitely happened.

So, she changed her name sometime after she arrived in New York?

I have this declaration of intention,

which is what immigrants file when they're going to become citizens.

Erm... 1936.

-So this is when she's trying to become a citizen.

-OK.

-Here she's Rosenberg.

-Uh-huh.

"I was born in Dublin, Ireland. Birthday, May 30, 1912."

So, if she immigrated in 1926 and got married in 1941, that's 15 years.

Which means there's a really long stretch

where I have no idea what she was doing.

Wow!

-So Evelyn Feldman... Oh, this is someone saying, "I know this person."

-Exactly.

"I first met her in New York City in January 1933 through mutual friends.

"Rita Hetty Rosenberg, known as Rita Benson."

She's known as Rita Benson as early as...?

Clearly by 1939, she's known as Benson.

But did she ever change her name officially?

This is the certificate of citizenship.

Aw!

So she got her citizenship, that's good.

Wow!

OK, so by the time she gets her citizenship, she's just Rita Benson.

"Name changed by decree of court, June 30th, 1939,

"from Rita Hetty Rosenberg to Rita Benson as part of naturalisation."

OK, so as part of her becoming a citizen,

-you can also do, like, a simultaneous name change?

-Yeah.

What were the main reasons why people changed their name? Jobs?

Yeah. There's a lot of anti-Semitism.

It increases in the US in the '20s and in the 1930s.

This is a clip from the New York World, a newspaper that we

were able to find through the New York Public Library.

"Help wanted. Male. Christian. Christian."

Every job has to be filled by a Christian.

-"Neat, intelligent Americans." So that meaning not immigrants.

-Right.

That's so crazy!

Employers are very open in discriminating against Jews.

They could openly say what kind of applicants they preferred.

-Christians.

-Yep.

It's so weird that there's this parallel American dream, right.

The one is "come to American and practise whatever you want,"

and the other is "find a way to change

"so that you can fully and completely ingratiate yourself

"in a way where you can't actually be too different."

Yeah. That's exactly right. Come, you can be successful, but, yeah, don't be too different.

-You'll only be successful if you're not too different.

-Exactly.

I know that my grandmother disappeared and there's a huge window.

She didn't get married till she was 29, so there's 15 years there,

and I don't know exactly when she went to the city and people stopped hearing from her.

But she must have been pretty young.

And I am definitely interested to know where she went and what she was doing.

OK.

The next step really is to figure out where my grandmother was

when she disappeared into the wild city of Manhattan.

When Rita lived in New York, she was working as something called a taxi dancer,

and was probably going by the name of Rosenberg.

Rashida is meeting with writer, David Freeland - an expert in 1930s Manhattan nightlife.

They're meeting in a former ballroom and nightclub in the basement of the Paramount Hotel.

-What was this called?

-Well, this was Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe.

It opened in 1938. This was really one of the greatest nightclubs in New York City history.

-Wow!

-You can imagine what it must have been like at the time.

-Yeah, I can kind of picture it.

-So this is my grandmother.

-Oh, wow!

-Extremely beautiful.

-Yeah, she's like a movie star.

Her name was Rita Rosenberg when she came to the US in 1926,

and at some point after that, my family says she was taxi dancing.

The term comes from the notion of being in a taxi cab -

-the more time you're in a cab, the more money you spend.

-Right.

As a taxi dancer, young women like Rita Rosenberg made five cents

for each 90-second dance, sometimes working well into the early morning hours

for the chance to dance with a handsome Harvard man or a Hollywood producer.

Early 1930s America was the golden era of taxi dancing

and it became so popular Hollywood made the movie Ten Cents A Dance about the glamorous industry.

Now, these are very, very rare, these are tabloids.

There's a column on gangster culture.

-Uh-huh.

-Three are also a lot of rather spicy cartoons.

-So, it's more of the underbelly of the city?

-Yeah.

It's sensationalism,

-but it's the only publication that had a taxi dancing column.

-OK.

We're going to flip to the Dancing By column from March 13th of 1933.

"Who were the two collegiates who flew to Canada

"because of a bet with Rita Ray and her shadow, Evelyn Fields,

hostesses at Bluebird!" Oh, my God!

One of my grandmother's witnesses for her naturalisation,

her name was Evelyn Feldman,

so I'm assuming that this twosome is Rita Rosenberg and Evelyn Feldman.

-How would you know that this was her?

-I think what we have to do

-is really look at all the areas of coincidence.

-Uh-huh.

-We know that pretty much all dancers used made-up names.

-Uh-huh.

-So really Rita R and Evelyn F.

-OK.

We can tell from looking at the various photographs that you've brought in,

your grandmother was pursuing a career as an entertainer.

-Really?!

-As a showgirl.

-Often taxi dancing was a stepping stone to work as a showgirl.

-OK.

This, I would say, is the 1930s.

-This photograph looks to be from the early 1940s.

-Uh-huh.

We can tell because of the hairstyle. And this is a publicity headshot clearly,

because she was having her photograph taken by Murray Korman.

So, Murray Korman was really

the go-to photographer for all showgirls.

Wow.

So, you would never just get a picture like this

taken of yourself unless you are pursuing that kind of career?

-You would not have gone to Murray Korman.

-OK.

But I definitely wonder how she compartmentalised being

Jewish in this world.

I feel like she almost had to, in some ways, just keep that out,

put that somewhere else for the time being, you know?

Well, I think what happens when a lot of people come to New York,

it happens now and it happened then, is that they reinvent themselves.

Right.

I love picturing my grandmother making her way in the city

and redefining herself

'and maybe it wasn't like the most respectable business to

'be in but just, to me, kind of modern and very independent'

and I feel cool to be connected to that.

'My grandmother was so young and yet so ambitious

'when she came to this country.

'I wonder what she was leaving back home.'

Rashida is travelling to Dublin where her grandmother Rita was born.

I'm really intrigued to find out whatever I can

about the Jewish culture here and how far back our roots go.

Rashida is meeting curator

Yvonne Altman O'Connor at the Irish Jewish Museum.

-Hi.

-Hello.

Yvonne has been searching local records

for details of Rita's life here.

-Thanks for sitting down with me.

-You are very welcome.

What I do know about my grandmother Rita

is that she, at some point, left to go to New York

-but was born in Dublin.

-Yes.

Now, here we have the birth certificate of your grandmother.

Cool.

Can I take a look at this?

Please.

Wow. Rita Hetty, May 15th, 1912.

Hyman Rosenberg is the name of the father.

Jeannie Rosenberg, formerly Benson.

OK, so that's her maiden name.

-That's right.

-Interesting.

My grandmother changed her name to Benson from Rosenberg

and we weren't sure if it had any real stem in the family.

So Rashida's grandmother Rita's parents were called

Hyman Rosenberg and Jeannie Benson,

which means Rita's uncle Elliot was probably Jeannie's brother.

I still wonder, that name Benson.

I have no idea about the origin of that name.

It is kind of still a mystery.

Did she change her name or was she, you know,

was the family more established here?

Cos that might explain the name.

Good question.

You know, I think you should meet with Stuart Rosenblatt,

-who is a Jewish genealogist.

-OK.

-And may be able to answer some of those questions for you.

-OK. Great.

'I wonder how everyone got here

'because my grandmother changed Rosenberg to Benson

'but that was originally my great-grandmother's maiden name'

but that might not be a real name.

So many people are named Benson.

'It is kind of a common name and it doesn't really tell me

'anything about where she came from.'

Rashida is meeting with a genealogist

at the National Archives.

-Hi.

-Hello, nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you, too.

-Please.

Stuart Rosenblatt has been looking into Rashida's

great-grandmother Jeannie Benson's family origins.

Over the last 14 years,

I have accumulated information of Irish Jewry,

-their ascendants and descendants from all around the world.

-Wow.

Of births, deaths, marriages and burials and research has

-shown that your great-grandmother's name Jeannie Benson is listed.

-Oh.

-Look. Ginny. Oh, Ginny, Jennie.

-They are known as different names.

OK, cos Jeannie was what I thought it was

-but I guess they're all in the same...

-Same genre.

-..family.

Born in Manchester.

-That's Manchester, England.

-Manchester, England. Really? Wow.

So, do you have anything that can help me find Jeannie's parents?

Your great-grandmother and father got married in 1906.

Right.

And this is the marriage certificate that we have uncovered.

-Yeah. Let me take a look at that.

-It's this part here.

OK, 27th December, signed Hyman Rosenberg, tailor, bachelor.

-Jeannie Benson, spinster.

-Yes.

So, the parents, I've actually never seen these parents' names.

Benjamin Benson, jewellery traveller

-and Sofia Benson Winestein.

-Winestein.

The marriage record for Rashida's great-grandparents gives

the name of Jeannie's parents,

Rashida's great-great-grandparents Sofia Winestein and Benjamin Benson.

Which means that Rashida's uncovered another generation in Ireland

with the surname Benson.

It's funny because I thought because my grandmother took this name,

I think we always assumed that it was, you know,

just kind of out of the ethers.

We didn't realise that the name went back this far.

And we have here photographs.

-Wow.

-That's Benjamin.

That's your great-great-grandfather.

And this is another photograph of Benjamin in his regalia.

Probably in his Shabbat best.

And this is where he is in a Englified shirt and jacket and tie.

-And top hat.

-And top hat.

-So sweet.

And that brings us to the 1911 census,

showing Benjamin and Sophia Benson.

Benjamin Benson had a family. Jew. Read and write.

-Hebrew teacher.

-See his age?

-72.

-72.

-Wow.

-That's pretty old.

-Very old.

What year is this? 1911 census.

-So born in 18...

-39. 37, 39.

Yeah, let's say that. Russia. Born in Russia.

That's definitely the first time I knew that.

That's kind of amazing. Wow.

What would this mean, Russia, at that time?

Well, it's the Russian Empire.

It doesn't define which country they would actually come from.

So that means everything from what we now know as Russia to,

like, all those other...

-Latvia, Lithuania.

-Estonia.

-Estonia.

-Yes, they were all in the Russian Empire.

-Wow.

Most of the Irish Jewish people are came from a town called

Akmene in Lithuania, and we did some research to find

the Benson family from Lithuania

and we came up to a dead end.

But what we did find was siblings who went to another country.

We have here an entry for Pescha Benson,

who is Benjamin's sister.

Right. Born 1824, Latvia.

So, Pescha Benson, according to the record,

is Rashida's great-great-grandfather Benjamin's sister.

And we can assume that they were both born in Latvia.

-Absolutely.

-Wow.

We have never known anything about

the true origin of our family on that side.

Well, you have a nice trip in store for you.

Latvia.

Now I know that Benson at least was rooted in some family history,

but I still know that that is not the real name because they were Latvian.

Rashida is heading to Riga, the capital of Latvia and the birthplace

of her great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Benson.

I have no idea about Latvia and I have no idea about what the

Latvian Jewish experience was like,

why they came further west in Europe.

I am very interested to trace that back.

Rashida has come to the National Archives to meet with

an expert in Jewish Latvian history, Rita Bogdanova.

Rita has been looking through the records for any trace

of Benjamin Benson and Rashida's Latvian roots.

So, and we go.

OK, so I have some pictures here of the last relative that I know of -

my great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Benson.

I would love to know more about

the 1800s in that region.

Until the end of World War I, the Russian Empire was home to

the largest Jewish population in the world

but the government perceived them as an economic and cultural threat.

Jews were subject to double taxation

and oppressively long military service.

Now that I'm here in Latvia, I feel like maybe Benson wouldn't be

a common name for someone to, you know, a Latvian Jew.

Whatever you know to help me shed light on it would be really nice.

Berman, Brouwer, Brenburg...

Could it be Brenburg?

No.

Wait. Benson.

I see Benjamin. It is actually Benson?

Really?

Wow.

That's crazy.

So, Schlaume Benjamin Benson, 62.

He must be Benjamin, my great-great-grandfather's father.

So, he is my great-great-great-grandfather.

-This is correct.

-Yeah, OK. Wow.

-Is there anything else you want to show me?

-Well...

-And that's where most of my family is from?

-Yes.

Aizpute.

Wow. Schlaume Benjamin Benson.

It's so well documented. I can't believe it.

-Yeah.

-OK, so these were the brothers.

-Yeah.

-The uncle.

Abraham, Isaak.

The military eligibility records have allowed Rashida to trace back

from her great-great-grandfather, Benjamin, to his father, Schlaume.

The records also reveal that Schlaume had three brothers

and that their father, Benjamin Marcus was born in 1786.

Wow, so they were there for a long time.

-Yes.

-Three or four generations.

-Yes.

-Amazing.

'I have learned that we have been in Latvia since the late 1700s.

'I have deep, deep, deep ties to this country.'

Rashida is travelling to Aizpute which was formerly called Hazenpoth.

It is where her great-great-great-grandfather

Schlaume spent most of his life, and where his son, Benjamin, was born.

I would like to know more about Hazenpoth

and what it was like for my family to live there for a few generations

and what it was like for Jews to live there.

Rashida is meeting with a Latvian Jewish historian,

Ilya Lensky, at a former synagogue.

He has been looking into the Bensons' history in Aizpute.

This is my great-great-grandfather Benjamin. His name is Benson.

Would Benson just be son of Benjamin?

-It could.

-Yeah, it could?

-It could.

Oh, so they didn't even have them?

Oh, right.

OK.

So we can on some level assume that Schlaume, before he was made to,

-didn't have a last name?

-Most probably.

Wow. To know now that that is actually our family name

and our first family name.

-The only one.

-The only one.

That's a big family revelation I'm happy to share with my family.

And then the next document that I saw

was my great-grandmother's birth in the UK in the 1880s,

so I guess, I'm imagining that Benjamin,

my great-great-grandfather, left sometime between

his father dying and whenever his daughter was born.

Most probably.

Why would he leave at this time?

Wow.

-So they would leave?

-They would leave.

So this building was the synagogue in Aizpute?

And what about the local community?

Completely.

So even though I know that my great-great-grandfather

went to England, Schlaume still had brothers

that maybe didn't leave here?

You best talk to Rita.

She'll be able to provide information of those who stayed,

-if any, up to the Holocaust.

-OK.

OK.

Ilya tells me that this was called the Jewish Bridge.

The Jews of Aizpute walked across it to get to synagogue.

Even though I know a little bit about the history of World War II,

when Ilya told me that they were all killed, I was so shocked.

When your family members lived in a town and left a town

and later everybody was taken down... It's shocking. I want to know more.

I want to know where everybody else went.

Who made it out, who didn't make it out, you know?

Cos in a weird way, it just was kind of dumb luck that I'm here.

'I'm really lucky.

'I feel like I owe it to my relatives and I owe it to myself

'to just know our complete history.'

Rashida is meeting with Rita Bogdanova again.

How are you doing?

They've arranged to meet at a Riga synagogue.

Rashida is hoping that Rita has been able to trace the fate of her family

during the Second World War.

I come back to you because I guess I'm curious as to

what happened to the descendants of Schlaume's brothers.

Isaac, Jankel, Abraham.

Schlaume's brothers had families.

Wow.

Shortly after Latvia gained its independence in 1918,

all citizens over the age of 16 were required to have a passport,

even to travel from town to town.

Rita was able to find passports

for several members of Schlaume's family, Rashida's distant cousins.

-From Paris?

-From Paris.

And that's Jankel's...daughter.

So great, I love that picture.

It's a very nice picture.

Rita was also able to find housing records reveal that Rashida's family

relocated from Aizpute to Riga well before World War II,

which means they were gone before the Jewish population there was murdered.

What was their fate in Riga?

So when it says that they are struck off the register,

what does that mean?

In July of 1941, Nazi troops took over Latvia

murdering 400 Jews in Riga and destroying every synagogue.

In September and October, the Nazis rounded up the remaining Jews

from across the city and moved them to the Riga ghetto.

In two actions, one on November 30th and one on December 8th, 1941,

more than 25,000 Latvian Jews and 1,000 German Jews

were taken into the Rumbula Forest six miles away.

Tell me about Rumbula.

He's so handsome, he's so young.

So, Schlaume's family made it...?

My family members were probably brought to the Rumbula Forest?

Right.

And is there anything there now?

It's heavy and it's a lot, but these are things that I wanted to know.

I wanted to...

Really have some closure about, you know, what happened with our family.

And I do, and I'm still processing it in a major way,

and I also have to tell my mom which is, like, a big...

It's a big deal.

Rashida now knows the fate of her grandmother Rita's family,

and the place where Rita's cousins and extended family were killed in 1941.

Rashida's mother Peggy has travelled to Latvia.

Rashida is taking Peggy to visit the Rumbula Memorial,

which stands in memory of the Jewish lives taken in World War II.

'When I began this journey I was hoping to find out

'more about my grandmother, Rita, and I'm astonished by how much

'more I've learned about my mother's side of the family.

'And, as difficult as it's been,

'I'm grateful to share these stories with my mother and that the two of us

'can now visit this memorial and pay our respects to our family.'

I want to tell you some of the names

and show you the people in our family.

-That are here?

-Yeah.

Schlaume's brothers, their families moved to Riga

and in 1941 they were taken to Rumbula to be killed.

'I am lucky to be alive.'

There's so many ways I could not be here.

Being a descendant of slaves, and then on my mom's side now, knowing...

Looking at that lopsided family tree.

I'm feeling like a miracle.

I feel like a miracle.

It's you and Rita, the same kind of shy smile.

-She was pretty.

-Very pretty.

You know, what's interesting is that

that name, that thing that remains so mysterious to us, Benson,

she took that name for whatever reason she took that name,

whether it was to redefine herself or whatever,

but, in a weird way, it was the ultimate honouring of that name,

because that name is the only name that family's ever had.

Benjamin Marcus, Schlaume's father,

was the first one documented to have that last name.

-You mean they didn't have last names?

-No.

Oh, my gosh! So Benson really was our name?

My mother was connected to all her relatives who died here.

Wow.

I definitely feel like why, you know, why would it be them and not us?

But then you also have to think we are here,

there's got to be a reason we're here.

I definitely feel like we've been given this opportunity to

honour them. That's something.

Somebody's got to remember them.

-I know.

-And how lucky, how fortunate for us that we can be the ones.

I know.

-It's senseless.

-Yeah, it's really, really, really senseless.

'I feel really strongly that this story can't be told enough,

'because it's not just a story about losing people,'

and it's not just a story about honouring your family,

'but it's really a story about how a lack of tolerance and fear

'and hatred and turning a blind eye can result in so much tragedy.'

SHE SNIFFS

Oh...

'I feel like it's a duty of somebody who is a very lucky

'descendant of people who made it through to keep telling the story.'

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