When filmmaker Simon Glass was growing up in Leeds, he used to attend the New Central Vilna Synagogue — but had no idea what or where Vilna was.

“It was like a mythical place where old people came from,” he says. “It was imprinted in my brain but without me really knowing why.”

When the BBC approached him to make a film about the history of the Jews of Leeds as part of a BBC4 series, A Very British History, Mr Glass grabbed the opportunity, especially as it meant he would get to visit the “mythical Vilna”.

The film starts with Mr Glass and his mother, Beryl, driving round the streets of north Leeds, exploring the Jewish areas. His family originated in both Lithuania and Belarus, both of which he visits in the film.

In a poignant scene, he visits Leeds City Art Gallery to explain how seeing the Jacob Kramer painting The Day of Atonement for the first time when he was 15 sealed his Jewish identity.

“The producers at first didn’t want me to include the scene but somehow, the painting, a stark portrait of men in tallisim on Yom Kippur, ending up resonating throughout the film,” Mr Glass says.

The film documents the rise of the tailoring business in Leeds, embodied in Jewish companies like Montague Burton, and the city’s retail history, in which Marks & Spencer plays a major role.

Chillingly, there are also scenes of Oswald Mosely rallies in Leeds in 1936. “Although we don’t have these types of rallies, there was a constant thread of antisemitism. Even looking at footage of Jewish people in Leeds talking in the 1980s, [you can see] it was there,” says Mr Glass.

He adds: “It’s also a modern story because just as the Jews were immigrants seeking refuge from the pogroms of Russia and the surrounding areas, we live in a time of migrants still looking for a safe haven.”

Mr Glass, who produced the documentary The Last Tribe for the BBC, which charted the progress of Leeds Jewry through the 20th century, took a DNA test to see if he could determine whether Judaism was a culture or an ethnic profile.

He ponders: “The question is, is it something you cannot escape because it is in your blood?”

After visiting Vilnius in Lithuania, once known as the Jerusalem of the North because of its large Jewish community, Mr Glass went on to Vashilishok in Belarus.

His maternal great-grandmother, Rebecca Miller, was born in the village. Her uncle, a tailor, left the village later, to be followed by her and her two brothers, who all settled in Leeds. Many members of the family, however, remained there.

“Being Jewish, you do tend to visit various Holocaust sites or camps and, although it’s moving, unless you have a direct connection, you are still an observer,” he says, “But what I discovered in Vashilishok rocked me.”

A local historian, Regina Kopilevich, tells Mr Glass of the day that 2,000 Jews in the village were rounded up and killed. She takes him to the site of the grave of the victims.

“To see a mass grave where people who share my genetic make-up are buried is really the most terrible thing I have experienced”, he says.

‘The Jews of Leeds’ was on BBC1 Yorkshire on Monday and will be broadcast nationally on BBC4 in February