Judge Rob Rinder has emphasised the atrocities of the Holocaust while visiting the site of a mass grave, describing it as ‘the most articulate expression of human evil’.
On Monday 9 November, the first episode in the two-part series My Family, The Holocaust and Me will air on BBC One.
The series will follow Rob as he helps Jewish families uncover what happened to their relatives in the Second World War.
The TV judge is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, who travelled to the UK as a young man after being liberated from a concentration camp by the Russian army.
In a clip from the first episode shared ahead of its release, Rob is filmed visiting a mass grave from the Holocaust in Voranava, Belarus, the long mound of earth surrounded by fencing and trees.
Rob becomes visibly emotional as he looks at the mass grave, stating: ‘It’s strange because it’s on the one hand just a mound, just a piece of nature, yet it’s the most articulate expression of human evil I’ve ever come close to.’
The 42-year-old stresses the importance of remembering those who were killed in the Holocaust, explaining that naming them can, ‘to a limited extent’, help to ‘give them back part of their humanity’.
‘Their humanity which was deprived. That’s the thing, that’s the most powerful, ugly, dark thing. This is the death of humanity here,’ he says.
Rob says that ‘hardest part is just imagining the last moments of terror’ the victims of the Holocaust experienced, while also asking himself, as he looks at the mass grave: ‘What do we do now?’
‘This is not the only place of earth like this in the world,’ he adds, choking up as he speaks.
‘There are more in other parts of the world, and there are more even after the Second World War, and the hardest part is maybe there’ll continue to be more.’
My Family, The Holocaust and Me is showing on BBC One on Monday 9 November at 9pm.
