The star had set out on his genealogical quest believing his German grandmother Margot had left much of the family’s story untold before she died in 1999.
Though they had a special bond and talked to each other at length, she never spoke to her grandson of her childhood in Berlin, or of her many cousins.
Lucas travelled to Germany and Holland to find out what happened to Margot, who came to Britain to work as a nurse in 1939.
Anne Frank pictured in May 1942, two months before her family went into hiding (Photo: Annefrank.org)
He told viewers: “My grandmother was very German, she was a formidable woman. We would chat for hours on the phone. Her English was very good and she was always correcting me.”
In Berlin, Lucas learned that his grandmother had plans to follow her own father to become a doctor. He was stunned to discover that she had been at medical school until the Nazis took over and barred Jews from higher education, bringing her dream to an abrupt end. He said: “It is something, I think, which must have been a source of great pain but she kept it to herself.
“I left my university early because my comedy career started to take off so I didn’t complete my degree and my grandmother was mortified. I took it almost as a lack of faith in me and my abilities but now maybe I can understand more why she would have been so opposed to that.”
Margot, an only child, made the devastating decision to leave Germany after Kristallnacht, during which her own synagogue was almost completely destroyed. Her mother, Therese, had multiple sclerosis and couldn’t be moved; other family members agreed to help look after her. Therese died of natural causes in 1942.
In Amsterdam, Lucas discovered his mother’s first cousin, Werner Goldschmidt, lodged in the home of Anne Frank, who wrote about him in her diary. The star was visibly astonished as he looked at the entry on Werner in Anne’s own handwriting. Although the lodger was around the family as they prepared to go into hiding; he never knew where they vanished to.
“I read it when I was younger, and never realised she was talking about a relative of mine,” says a stunned Matt. “But to think he would have known Anne Frank and he was lurking around slightly unwelcome the night before they were going is a big surprise. Her book is one of the most important books ever written.”
There are few glimmers of light in the story of Marta’s family but the comic recognises his own part in telling the story of what happened, something that had been too painful for his grandmother to do. “My grandmother never talked about her cousins but I think she knew what happened to them,” he says.
“I’d been told in the vaguest terms that my family had died in the camps but I had never been told their names and I never knew the details. This is recent history and it feels that there is always a risk as a Jew that this could happen again. It is so important to tell these stories.”
Matt Lucas' episode of Who Do You Think You Are? is available to view on BBC iPlayer. The series continues to air on BBC One on Thursday evenings at 9pm
