Old Elizabethan Robert ‘Judge’ Rinder experienced an emotional journey to the Nazi concentration camp where his grandfather, Morris Malenicky, was imprisoned in this week’s episode of the BBC One’s Who Do You Think You Are?
Polish-born Morris lost seven relatives – his parents, four sisters and a brother – in the Treblinka Camp in Poland in 1940 and he was the only one of his immediate family to survive the Holocaust.
In 1942, he had to register the deaths. The certificate, which is shown to Robert (pictured above at his Bar Mitzvah with his grandfather), reads: “Malenicky. Place of birth: Piotrkow, Poland. Circumstances of death: Four sisters, a brother, parents, Treblinka Camp. Gas chambers, crematorium.”
At this point in the programme, Robert (OE 1989–1994) says: “Imagine writing that, how your four sisters, your brother and your parents were wiped out.”
In an interview with the TV Times, Robert explained why he wanted to take part in the programme: “So many of us are interested in understanding where we came from and I only had an outline that I wanted coloured in. But it’s also important that we all understand more about the Holocaust.”
Morris, who was a teenager at the time, escaped the fate of his family only because he was deemed strong enough for work: he was put into forced labour at a glass factory in Piotrkow, his home town. Later, he was sent to the Buchenwald and Schlieben camps in Germany and then to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, which was liberated by the Russian Army three weeks after his arrival.
After the war, he was brought to the UK by a Jewish charity, the Central British Fund. He later met and married Lottie, Robert’s grandmother. Morris died in London in 2001 at the age of 78.
During the programme, Robert is shown the house where Morris grew up in Piortrkow, the ruins of the glass factory, the Buchenwald camp and its sub-camp, Schlieben. At Schlieben, he meets one of his grandfather’s friends, Ben Helfgott, who tells him about the starvation they suffered there,
He told the TV Times: “…there was a biting cold and I imagined my grandfather there in ragged clothing. I met up with my grandfather’s friend, Ben, who had been with him there. The most powerful moment was when Ben said to me, ‘Let’s walk out of here together’. That changed my life.”
Robert is also seen visiting Lake Windermere, where Morris arrived, and watches footage of the orphans’ journey to England. “As I approach Windermere, I imagine what my grandfather would have felt coming from the dankness and greyness of Schlieben into this – big sky, and green, verdant English loveliness.”
Robert said he had spent a great deal of time with his grandfather, yet he had never really told the family what had happened. “…The Holocaust was an unforgettable shadow in the family as my grandfather would behave in eccentric and challenging ways because of what he’d been through.”
Overall, Robert described the experience of making the programme as “an amazing gift. They’d just been statistics before but I read details of how his siblings were good at school and that they loved performing and that breathed life into these young children for me.”
He told the TV Times that his plans for the coming months include more episodes of Judge Rinder and of the Crime Stories programme and, perhaps, a chat show as well.
The listing of academically selective schools – in which QE was placed third overall – is based on educational data and examination results from 2017.
Headmaster Neil Enright said: “I am very pleased to see the achievements of our boys and their teachers recognised in this table.
Firstly, it took into account the percentage achieving five or more GCSEs graded A*–C (or 9–4, under the new marking system). All of the top ten schools achieved 100% by this measure.
They had to design a product to solve a real-world problem, while also considering their marketing and business proposition. To create their prototypes, the participants were allocated a budget which they could use to buy the basic materials (such as card, tape and wooden sticks) from a ‘market’ in the hall.
finance and business acumen to come up with a new product that was a practical proposition – and all in the space of a day. The boys successfully produced some very interesting and promising proposals.”
Afterwards, Simon said: “The students were given the opportunity to design and develop ideas that use some new, cutting-edge technologies. I talked through a few new materials and the associated technology – and the students did the rest. They came up with a wide range of new product ideas, with the best being presented in the Dragons’ Den.”
to charge a mobile phone. The second-day winners designed Simon’s particular favourite – SafeSensors, a sports helmet which not only protected the head but also had built-in impact sensors that could notify the team coach or doctor of any impact that would require a player to be treated or substituted (in cases of concussion, for example).
Two of 2017’s Year 13 leavers, Nabil Haque and Tochi Onuora, who are both studying Architecture at Cambridge, came back to help.
The pieces were judged at the end of the event. The Stapylton House team – comprising Alex Aliev, Nikhil Gulshan, Rakul Maheswaran, Jack Runchman, Aqif Choudhury, Riaz Kalim and Jude Miranda – won overall. Their contribution was praised for the way that it essentially used the same hexagonal shape repeatedly to build up the structure and create something very stable, yet still architecturally interesting.
Mr Enright congratulated the award-winners and explained how they could learn from the former South African President and 1993 Nobel Peace Prize-winner, speaking on what would have been his 100th birthday.
Just as Mr Mandela had spoken of “keeping one’s head pointed towards the sun, one’s feet moving forwards”, the boys should “keep taking those forward steps” and should also be “highly, but realistically, ambitious”.
The ceremony was enhanced by music performed by the boys, including three pieces from British composers – Samba Triste from Three Piece Suite by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, Promenade from Le Tombeau de Couperin by John McLeod and Hypnosis by Ian Clarke.