JGSGB-Announce Mailing List: Outreach Program at Lexington Library on Wednesday

[JGSGB Announcements List (jgsgb-announce]

Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston

presents the BBC film

Who Do You Think You Are?
Natasha Kaplinsky

Wednesday, June 16, 2010
7:00 PM
  Cary Memorial Library
1874 Massachusetts Avenue
Lexington, MA

You’ve seen the new U.S. version -- now compare it to the original BBC family history series. The BBC series is not available in the U.S.

This tightly-produced and thoughtful 60-minute episode follows Natasha Kaplinsky, an engaging BBC anchorwoman, as she traced her roots. Her paternal line descends from Slonim, Poland (now Belarus), by way of South Africa to England. 

The film portrays the joys and sorrows of a genealogical search from an initial curiosity about why her family never spoke of this eastern European background through the process of interviewing family, going to archives, using internet sites, hiring a researcher, and visiting people and places of the past.

As is typical in family research, surprises pop up, and there is an appreciation of how world events reverberate through the generations. One surprise: Kaplinsky learns that her great-uncle survived the Holocaust as a member of the Bielsky Brothers resistance in the forests of Poland (the subject of the movie Defiance.)

 Admission is free and open to the public