'My Tragic Heritage'

Robert Rinder on how the horrors endured by his Polish and Latvian ancestors changed his life…

- Caren Clark

He’s best known as the tough-talking master of the courtroom in Judge Rinder and as a celebrity dancer on Strictly.

But when TV Times catches up with barrister Robert Rinder before his appearance in this week’s Who Do You Think You Are?, we get a glimpse of his softer side as he reveals the moving discoveries he has made about his Polish-born grandfather Morris Malenicky.

Morris, who was Jewish, was the only member of his immediate family to survive the Holocaust as his parents and siblings were killed in Nazi concentration camps while he worked as forced labour in a factory.

‘I studied history at university but it is different having been in the presence of someone who lived under the chokehold of tyranny,’ says Robert, 40.

Here, he tells us more…

Did you know about your grandfather’s experiences during the Holocaust?

I still have three grandparents alive and in their 90s – I’m so lucky – and I knew my grandfather Morris until he died when I was 23. We spent a lot of time together but he never sat down to tell us what 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. When he died we found in his drawers little handkerchiefs with food in them and a library of books about the Third Reich.